Lime Street Blues

by Maureen Lee

  ‘Here we are. I’ve made it extra strong.’ Alex came in with a tray of tea things. He was wearing a cream Arran sweater, obviously a Christmas present, and new red plush slippers. He looked a perfectly contented, happily married man, even if there wasn’t a piece of paper to prove it. ‘I’ll pop upstairs and make sure the girls are all right.’ It was his tactful way of removing himself from the room while Jeannie continued to pour out her heart.

  Amy and Eliza had been put down for their afternoon nap just after she arrived. ‘They’ve been up since the crack of dawn, anxious to see what Santa Claus had brought them,’ Rose had said smilingly. She’d used to say ‘Santa Claus’ when they were little, Jeannie remembered. At school, she’d wondered why the other children got their presents off someone called Father Christmas.

  ‘Did they like the dolls from me and Lachlan?’ she asked when Alex had gone.

  ‘They loved them. Eliza’s is almost as big as she is. They’ve taken their clothes on and off half a dozen times. I’ve promised to make them nightdresses for bed. Oh, and thank you, Jeannie, for the scent. It’s lovely, and Alex is very pleased with his new driving gloves.’

  ‘I haven’t opened our presents yet,’ Jeannie said sadly. ‘We usually do it after breakfast but, well, you know what happened.’

  Rose sighed and said soberly, ‘I’ve neglected you, haven’t I? The thing is, I never really looked upon you three as children. I didn’t know my own mother, so I wasn’t sure how I was supposed to behave. Your father always treated me like a child, then you and Max seemed to grow up so much more sensible and wiser than I was. I couldn’t imagine you really needing me.’

  ‘I needed you today, Mum.’

  ‘I know, love.’ She stroked Jeannie’s arm. ‘I’m just glad I was here for you as I should have been for Max. But thank goodness he’s all right now. Sit up and let’s have this tea before it gets cold.’

  Jeannie’s half-sisters came down soon afterwards, their faces pink with sleep, their pale hair tousled. She’d never really got to know them as she should, but they were pleased to find her still there and thanked her nicely for the dolls.

  She watched them play on the hearth with the dolls and their other presents. The scene could well have featured on a Christmas card; two pretty little girls in front of a blazing log fire separated by a gleaming brass fireguard, a fat tree threaded with tinsel. The beamed walls were looped with paper chains. It was beautifully warm and the settee where she’d fallen into her mother’s arms was soft and downy. Despite the awfulness of the day, she felt relaxed. She did her utmost to put Lachlan to the back of her mind and think about something else, such as how nice it was to find that her mother was still her mother after all. She liked being in her pretty, warm house.

  Rose and Alex went to make the tea, refusing her help. ‘You stay and rest, love,’ her mother insisted. ‘You’ve already made enough meals for today.’

  ‘I’ve just remembered I left the turkey in the oven!’

  ‘Lachlan’s bound to surface sometime and he’ll notice if it’s burning.’

  As long as the house didn’t burn down, Jeannie didn’t care what happened to the turkey. Alex shouted that tea was ready and the girls jumped to their feet and went through the door that looked as if it opened on to a small cupboard, but which led down three steps to the tiny dining room.

  She discovered, after having eaten nothing all day, that she was unusually hungry, and quickly polished off a plate of cold turkey and chips. It was followed by trifle, mince pies, and Christmas cake. She thought about her own concrete cake left lying on the kitchen floor. Lachlan might notice that too when – if – he found the turkey.

  After two glasses of sherry, she asked if she could ring Elaine at Harwood Hall. ‘She was going to ring me this afternoon. She’ll be wondering where I am.’

  Jeannie didn’t recognise the voice that answered when she called the Elroy-Smythes’. She asked for Elaine Bailey, and it was a while before Elaine said, ‘Hello.’

  ‘Hello back. It’s me.’

  ‘Jeannie! Where are you? I’ve been trying to ring you for ages, but there was no reply.’

  ‘I’m at my mother’s. Are you having a good time down there?’

  ‘No!’ Elaine’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It’s awful, freezing cold and deadly boring. There’s nothing to do and our Marcia’s driving everyone bonkers. D’you know, that poor baby’s name has already been put down for Eton and he’s only five months old? According to Marcia, he’s a genius just because he can wave a rattle. “Look at him!” she keeps screeching, when all Iain’s done is smile.’

  ‘Oh, well. Only another three days to go,’ Jeannie said sympathetically.

  ‘There’s no way I’m spending another three days in this ice house,’ Elaine said bluntly. ‘I’ve made an excuse, I said I’d been invited to a party tomorrow. Fortunately, I came in my own car, so I can leave whenever I please, but I don’t know whether to go back to London or come to Liverpool. Either way, I’ll be going to an empty house.’

  ‘Liverpool! Please, Elaine, come to Liverpool.’

  ‘If you’re that keen to have me, of course I will.’ Elaine sounded pleased. ‘If I set off early, I should be at your house about midday.’

  ‘Not our house, your house. I’ll see you in Walton Vale on the dot of twelve. Don’t ask why. I’ll tell you tomorrow.’

  Christmas evening was spent dozing in front of the television and drinking more sherry. She saw how Alex helped put the little girls to bed, then made turkey sandwiches and a pot of tea. She also saw her mother keep darting him little smiles and recalled that her father had never deigned to so much as put the kettle on. She probably appreciated his help more than most woman. Jeannie was glad her mother was so happy.

  She slept in a cosy little bed in a warm room under a bouncy, daffodil yellow eiderdown. Although she fell asleep the minute her head touched the pillow, she woke up early, when it was pitch dark, with the memory of Lachlan’s dark, unfriendly look at the forefront of her mind. She wasn’t sure if they could recover from the events of yesterday.

  At half past eleven, on a cold, crisp Boxing Day, she left Magnolia Cottage for Walton Vale. Her mother and Alex came to the gate to wave her off, each carrying a child in their arms. They both pressed on her that she wasn’t to hesitate to come again.

  ‘You’re to think of this as your second home,’ Alex said.

  ‘I will,’ Jeannie promised. ‘Thank you both very much. Christmas turned out much better than I expected.’ As she got in the car, she wondered how it had turned out for Lachlan.

  ‘I rose with the birds,’ Elaine said when she opened the door. ‘I wanted to get here and light the fire before you came. I’m still thawing out. After yesterday, I know what it must be like to live in an igloo. I’ve just made some tea. Go and sit in the parlour and I’ll bring it up. The fire should be well away by now.’

  A coal fire crackled cheerfully in the grate and the television was on without the sound when Jeannie went into the parlour upstairs. The room was festooned with the familiar dusty Christmas decorations that were brought out every year, and the old piano on which she’d played Minuet in G on her very first visit still stood in exactly the same place. She’d like to bet it hadn’t been tuned since. She lifted the lid, played a few notes, and grimaced. She was right!

  Elaine came in with the tea. Jeannie said, ‘I’ve been thinking about buying a proper piano.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that one’s not proper?’ Elaine grinned.

  ‘No, I meant as well as a keyboard. I miss the extra notes.’

  ‘What’ll you get, a white baby grand to go with your house?’

  ‘No, one like this, an upright. The sort I learnt on.’ She went and sat in an armchair in front of the fire, hugging her knees. ‘I suppose you want to know what happened yesterday?’

  ‘Not really. I know you and Lachlan have had a row. He rang last night to ask if you’d been in touch. He was worried about you. I�
�d sooner not take sides. After all, he’s my brother.’

  ‘What time did he ring?’

  Elaine shrugged. ‘Ten-ish.’

  ‘It took him long enough to be worried.’ Jeannie sniffed. ‘And you’re wrong, we haven’t had a row. He just took it into his head to spend Christmas in the basement and to hell with me.’

  ‘He’s upset because Fly Fleming wants to leave the Merseysiders. He told me last night.’

  ‘That’s hardly my fault,’ Jeannie cried angrily. ‘Why should I have to suffer because of what Fly wants to do? It was the same with Max. He cut himself off from his family for ages and ages because of what Lachlan did to him.’

  ‘Please, God, don’t let me fall in love with a musician.’

  ‘I wish I never had.’

  There was silence for a while, except for the crackle of the fire and the ticking of the big clock on the mantelpiece. Then Elaine said, ‘Do you really mean that, Jeannie?’

  ‘Of course I damn well don’t.’ Jeannie felt, most unfairly, that it was a stupid question. ‘Lachlan will always be the love of my life. We’ve been married nearly six years and for most of that time we’ve been deliriously happy . . .’ She paused.

  ‘But not any more?’

  ‘Not if yesterday’s anything to go by. Oh, let’s talk about something else,’ she said impatiently. ‘How are Marcia and Iain? Your mum and dad? And you? Only another six months and you’ll be a fully fledged doctor. Are you looking forward to it?’

  Elaine pulled a face. ‘I’m not exactly looking forward to working eighty hours a week on the wards, but it’ll be nice to finish my training. Mum and Dad are fine, Iain’s thriving, and Marcia’s being a thorough pain in the bum. But when has she ever been anything else? I don’t know how Phil puts up with it. By the way, she’s pregnant again. Do you want more tea? I brought the pot up with me.’

  They spent the next few hours chatting idly. Jeannie was struck by how uninteresting her life had become. Elaine had all sorts of experiences to relate. How Cordelia, the cadaver, had been given a proper burial and the whole class had sent flowers. The peculiar people she met on the wards where she already spent much of her time. The most peculiar of all were the consultants, whose egos were a mile wide and whose arrogance had to be seen to be believed. ‘The patients are usually very sweet, particularly with us students. It’s horrid when someone you’ve grown fond of dies.’

  Jeannie had little to tell in return. All she could recall doing in December was heaps of baking, which had turned out to be a complete waste of time.

  ‘You can bring the mince pies and cheese straws to the party,’ Elaine told her.

  ‘What party?’

  ‘The one here on New Year’s Eve.’

  ‘Lachlan has a gig somewhere, Norwich, I think.’

  ‘That shouldn’t stop you coming. It’ll be quite like old times, just the two of us.’ Elaine glanced at her watch. ‘I won’t be a minute.’ She left the room.

  Jeannie turned up the sound on the television when she saw Tommy Cooper was on. She had actually managed a laugh when Elaine came back.

  ‘There’s someone in the waiting room wants to see you,’ she said. ‘I told him to be here dead on four o’clock.’

  ‘Lachlan!’

  Elaine smiled. ‘Who else?’

  ‘I’m not sure if I want to see him.’ She went slowly down the stairs, unsure if she would ever again feel the same about Lachlan.

  He was sitting in the armchair where they’d done most of their courting, wearing the blue sweater he’d got for his twenty-first, which he refused to throw away, even though it was full of snags and holes. When she went in, he held out his arms. Jeannie ignored them, folded her own arms, and leaned against the door. He wasn’t going to find making up that easy.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said abjectly.

  ‘So’m I.’

  ‘I had things on my mind. I forgot what day it was, where I was – everything. You should have thrown a bucket of water over me or something.’

  ‘I asked you to come to breakfast,’ Jeannie said stiffly, ‘and you gave me a look as if you hated me. After that, I’d no intention of going near you again.’

  ‘Hated you! Don’t be daft, darling.’ He came over, stood in front of her, and put his hands on the door beside her head. ‘I adore you, you know I do.’

  ‘You didn’t yesterday.’

  He rubbed his bristly chin against her forehead and this slight, not even faintly romantic gesture affected Jeannie in a way a kiss would never have done. She knew that nothing in the world would ever stop her from loving Lachlan Bailey. She refrained from letting him know this just yet. No matter how much she loved him, it didn’t take away the fact that he’d completely ruined her Christmas with his thoughtlessness, though perhaps she should have made more of an effort to remove him from the basement, like empty the ruined breakfast over his head rather than in the bin.

  ‘Fly wants to leave,’ he said.

  ‘Would you ruin his Christmas if I said I wanted to leave?’

  He uttered a roar, lifted her over his shoulder, carried her to the chair – their chair – flung her down, then threw himself beside her. ‘If you left, I’d ruin everyone’s Christmas,’ he whispered in her ear.

  Despite being turned on even more by this Stone Age manoeuvre, Jeannie moved her head away and said coldly, ‘So, you spent the entire day in a sulk because of Fly?’

  ‘I started off in a sulk, but the day ended on a highly constructive note.’ He gave a self-satisfied smile and she wanted to punch him. ‘First things first. The Merseysiders have got half a dozen gigs lined up. After that, they’ll be disbanded.’

  He paused expectantly for her gasp of horrified surprise, but Jeannie merely said, ‘And then?’

  ‘Then I’m starting a new group, but we won’t be playing any of that psychedelic nonsense. I’m returning to my roots, to good old rock ’n’ roll. There’ll only be three of us – a drummer, a bass guitarist, and myself. I rang Fly yesterday and he’s agreed to stay. A guy called Jimmy Cobb will be playing bass. I rang him as well and it’s all been settled – I only met him recently and he’s fed up with his namby-pamby group. We’re calling ourselves the Survivors. Oh, and I’m ditching Ford and Firth and going with Kevin McDowd – I called him too.’ He’d obviously interrupted an awful lot of people’s Christmases. ‘He’ll be our manager from now on. He’s organising a big launch at the end of March. I’ve already written our first number, “Rock-a-bye, Lady”. Don’t you think that’s a great title?’ He gave her a look of pained surprise. ‘Yesterday, I came upstairs to tell you all this stuff, but you weren’t around.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘I dunno, Jeannie. It was dark,’ he said helpfully. ‘I called our Elaine and she said you were at your mother’s and to leave you to cool down for some reason. By the way, the turkey’s ruined. You forgot to turn the oven off and I don’t know if we’ve got a poltergeist, but the Christmas cake was on the floor.’

  ‘Oh, Lachlan!’ Jeannie sighed. ‘You’ve no idea, have you?’

  ‘Darling!’ He gave her a ferocious hug. ‘I’m full of ideas, and the one uppermost in my mind at the moment is to make love to you. Shall we go home?’

  ‘No,’ Jeannie said sternly. ‘We’re staying with Elaine till your mum and dad come back. You’ll just have to wait until tonight when we’re in bed.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I can wait so long.’

  Neither did Jeannie. She would just have to accept that she was married to a fanatic, a man who would demand a guitar to play if he was on his death bed and whose wife would always take second place to his music.

  It was at the New Year’s party, when she was asked to play the piano, that Jeannie decided she wanted to return to show business. She was fed up being a housewife in a house that another woman cleaned, and there was no sign of the baby she longed for. If she thought about it less, as the doctor had advised, occupied her mind with other things, then she might
find it easier to conceive.

  The next day, she rang Kevin – she was glad the McDowds were back in their lives – and asked if she stood a chance as a pianist on her own. She didn’t want to belong to another group, she said. It was too hectic and she preferred her independence.

  ‘Well,’ Kevin said thoughtfully, ‘I can guarantee you some bookings purely on your name, but the days of the solo piano player ended with Winifred Atwell and Russ Conway. They were top performers in their day, but that was the fifties and now it’s nineteen sixty-nine. Leave it with me, Jeannie, and I’ll see what I can do.’

  In March, Jeannie appeared on an afternoon programme on BBC television, The Flower Girls, Two Years On, with Zoe, Rita and Marcia, who insisted on bringing Iain and was proudly pregnant again. Rita was asked to sing and Jeannie to play – Kevin had made sure that she would – and she gave a rendition of the Beatles’ ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’, moving seamlessly from classical style, to ragtime, then rock ’n’ roll.

  Following this, bookings didn’t exactly pour in, but there were a few, enough to keep her busy, while Lachlan’s new group, the Survivors, got off to a rousing start. At twenty-seven, he was referred to as a ‘veteran of rock’, and was relieved to be back in the charts – though he still yearned to be top.

  Part Four

  Chapter 12

  1975

  Kevin McDowd had a suite of offices in Mayfair, a mews house in Knightsbridge, a mansion in Ireland, and a flat in Paris, which was hardly used as he couldn’t spare the time. He also owned several cars – the favourite being a Rolls Royce Corniche – a racehorse, and a de Havilland Dove five-seater plane with a pilot always on hand to take him anywhere he wished. Kevin had built an empire, a whole stable of artists, adding to the list all the time.

  The most famous person on his books was his son, who had made his name in America where he was resident for most of the year. Always a rebel, Sean’s protest songs had caught the mood of the Vietnam era. Now he sang about the disillusionment of the seventies. He came home at least once a year to tour the British Isles and every venue would be packed, the tickets sold out weeks beforehand.