The Mersey Girls

by Sheila Riley

  ‘So, poor Susie got the push,’ Ada said changing the subject, ‘you should take her to the pictures. Cheer her up a bit.’

  ‘I’m not taking anybody to the pictures,’ Danny answered. ‘I’ve got to save enough money to get me own yard. And another thing while I think on,’ he said, not looking in Ada’s direction, ‘even if I did think of getting wed, it wouldn’t be to Susie.’

  Before his mother could answer, he was out of the front door, down the steps and in the wagon.

  ‘I told you it was sore, didn’t I,’ Bobby said when he came home in the middle of the morning, accompanied by one of the masters of Saint Patrick’s Senior Boys.

  ‘I would suggest an immediate visit to your family doctor, Mrs Harris.’

  ‘Right away, sir,’ Ada said and Bobby, feeling rightfully justified in his grievance of his mother, thought all she was short of doing was bobbing a curtsy. His mother was of the opinion that when authority spoke, the little man or woman obeyed, no questions asked. ‘If I’d have known he was in such pain, I would have took him straight away, wouldn’t I Bobby?’ Ada nodded, but Bobby wasn’t in the mood to be pacified. ‘Thank you so much for bringing him home, sir,’ his mam said in that voice she used when she was talking to the priest. ‘I will take him straight round to our doctor, we won’t need an appointment as he is obviously suffering.’

  Bobby was hardly able to open his mouth when he tried to examine the inside in the mirror over the fireplace when his mam came back into the kitchen.

  ‘Come here, and let me have a look!’ Ada, impatient, allowed herself a fleeting twinge of guilt when she saw the swelling of Bobby’s cheek. She could have done without this today, she wanted to go out to Netherford with Danny to check something Susie mentioned would be of interest. ‘I’ve got a million things to do, and now I’ve got to take you to the doctor.’

  ‘I couldn’t concentrate on me tests this morning,’ Bobby laid it on thick, knowing his mam could look a bit more guilty than she did at the moment. ‘Even Miss Evans said, if I were her son, she would never have let me go to school in this much pain.’

  ‘All right, Laurence Olivier, don’t milk it. I said I’ll take you and I will.’

  When they arrived at the doctor’s surgery on Stanley Road half an hour later, the waiting room was already full, and Bobby knew his mam was not pleased. Her lips looked like they were glued shut.

  ‘We’ll be here all flipping day,’ Ada said when she did speak. Letting out a loud sigh and taking the only chair available, she looked at the clock again. She was going out to Netherford today, and was going to ask Danny to take her. But by the time I get out of here, he will be long gone. ‘Straighten yourself up,’ she told Bobby, who was leaning against the frame of the open sash window, ‘and take your hands out of your pockets.’

  A few minutes later the door opened, and everybody looked towards a lady in a tweed skirt and horn-rimmed glasses.

  ‘Jennifer Nichols!’ the receptionist called in a voice that was too loud for such a small, cramped room filled with people, and a young girl in pigtails got up from the seat next to Ada and walked round the large, polished table that displayed copies of Town and Country and Hare and Hounds magazines.

  ‘I bet they belonged to the doctor,’ Bobby said to his mother, ‘because nobody here’s reading them.’

  ‘What d’you expect?’ Ada’s nostrils flared in disgust. ‘They wouldn’t know good breeding if it jumped up and bit them on the arse.’ She nodded to the vacant chair beside her, but Bobby decided it was more comfortable to stand, his undercarriage felt painful too. ‘Thank heavens for this new National Health Service,’ Ada said to the woman next to her.

  ‘I know,’ replied the woman, whose nose almost touched her chin like a Punch and Judy puppet. ‘I had all my teeth out yesterday.’ She opened her mouth, showing two rows of pink wet gums and Bobby couldn’t look away quick enough. ‘It’s not all bad, though,’ the woman lisped, ‘I’m having a new oven put in later.’

  ‘Fancy.’ Ada shrugged and looked at the clock, half-past ten. She glared at Bobby who rolled his eyes. His mam never listened. He told her yesterday that he didn’t feel right, and she said he was swinging the lead because he wanted to stay off and listen to the football on the wireless. Women didn’t understand nothing, he thought miserably, the World Cup only came round once every four years.

  ‘Robert Harris!’ the horn-rimmed one called, coming into the waiting room, and Bobby noticed his mam was up out of her seat like she’d been fired from a gun.

  ‘Come on, let’s get you into the insulting room and see what’s what,’ Ada said, heading towards the doctors consulting room, and Bobby, who soaked up words like a sponge, was anything but amused when the doctor took one look at him and said to his mother, ‘The boy has mumps.’

  ‘Mumps!’ Ada looked at Bobby like he was a ticking bomb about to go off and she backed away to get a better view of his face.

  ‘I told you it hurt.’ Bobby was lying on the doctor’s couch and feeling a deep sense of satisfaction that, for once, his mam was wrong.

  ‘Right,’ Ada said, looking suitably shamefaced. She had raised three kids. Surely she should have recognised mumps when she saw it. But that was the problem. She didn’t see it. Because she wasn’t looking. She was too busy thinking of other things.

  As Bobby was easing himself from the doctor’s couch, he felt another sharp pain in his down-below, the name his mother gave to anything she found too embarrassing to give a proper name. He winced and the doctor put his hand on his shoulder and gave him a sympathetic look.

  ‘I’m afraid mumps can affect other glands as well.’ Then, turning to Ada, he said, ‘I suggest you take him straight home, put him to bed for the next two weeks.’

  ‘Two weeks in bed?’ Bobby tried to look suitably disappointed but was quietly thrilled. ‘What a pity I will miss the end-of-term exams.’ And he could listen to the World Service coverage of The FIFA World Cup on the wireless. The competition was being held in Brazil and the first since before the war, and, although he was in a bit of pain, Bobby was sure he could manage to ‘persuade’ his mam to let him listen to the matches. It was the least she could do for putting him through the ordeal of sending him to school when he was obviously so ill.

  ‘If you’re that sick, you won’t be interested in listening to the football,’ Ada said bringing him a glass of water as he languished on the sofa, a soft pillow under his head and melting under the eiderdown off his bed. ‘Plenty of fluids the doctor said, so drink up.’

  ‘I don’t think I can,’ Bobby croaked like a bullfrog. ‘He looked worried that doctor, like he wasn’t sure if I’m at death’s door or something, and he said mumps is highly contagious.’ His innocent-sounding words bit Ada and she relented.

  ‘I suppose it won’t do no harm to listen to the football, if you keep the wireless on low,’ she said, knowing she could have infected the whole school by sending Bobby in. ‘D’you think I’ll get reported to the authorities?’ Ada didn’t like the authorities. Once they got their sticky beaks into your business they never let up.

  ‘Who knows.’ Bobby shrugged, he could see his mother looked worried. ‘He did say contagious diseases have to be reported to the health people. You might only get a warning.’

  ‘A warning?’ His mam looked at him like he had just grown another head. ‘But how was I supposed to know you had mumps, even your own teacher thought it was a bad tooth?’ Ada stood by the window, looking down the yard. She watched next door’s ginger tom sauntering along the back-yard wall.

  When Henry opened the letter with the familiar handwriting that oozed malice as it scrawled across the page, he knew what he had to do. He had discussed everything with Meggie, and she agreed completely.

  ‘I am glad,’ she told her husband, ‘we should have done it years ago.’

  Going to the yard, she called Danny, who came over, his expression full of concern.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ Danny’s brow furro
wed into a frown. ‘Is the auld man all right?’ He looked relieved when she smiled.

  ‘Aye, lad,’ she said, ‘never better.’ And with that she went and fed the chickens that Danny brought back from Netherford, so they would have more room to run around and grow than the birds would have in their own back yard. They were getting big and plump with all the seed and grain Meggie fed them each day, along with the potato peelings that had been boiled and mashed.

  ‘Come in, lad,’ Henry said as Danny went into the spacious sitting room that was identical in shape and size to his own home, but the atmosphere was much more cordial here. Nobody would think his mam and Uncle Henry were first cousins, different as day and night.

  Is everything all right?’ Danny asked, taking a seat at the other side of the fireplace.

  Henry nodded. ‘As you know, my Meggie wants me to take things easy, and to tell you the truth, I quite fancy that too. However, there is something that’s been worrying me of late.’ Henry put his pipe between his teeth. It was unlit and had been since he went into hospital. ‘You know the old ticker is not as strong as it once was, and if truth be told, I don’t want to put any more pressure on it than I have to. Me and Meg want to grow old together, and we can’t do that if I spend all my waking hours out in that yard.’

  ‘What do you propose to do?’ Danny felt his heart sink to his boots. He had hoped to carry on working here until he had enough money to set up a place of his own, but that could take years.

  ‘I have a question,’ Henry said, ‘what do you think about buying the yard from me?’

  Danny could see that he was deadly serious and that sinking feeling he had earlier turned in on itself and he felt sick. ‘You know I can’t afford to buy you out; it really would be the never-never.’ Danny could hardly get the words out, picturing his dreams fading to dust. He thought that Henry would keep this yard until he dropped. But now he thought about it logically, Danny realised his uncle had almost worked himself to death, and if he didn’t retire now, he and Aunt Meggie would never see the autumn of their years together.

  ‘I haven’t told you the price yet,’ Henry grimaced, getting no satisfaction from his unlit pipe. Danny knew the yard. In his hands, it would be worth a fortune. Then there was the unused land that went right down to the docks. ‘There is just one piece of land I don’t own,’ Henry said, ‘we sold that off a while ago to keep the business afloat.’ It was only a small lie, he thought, knowing there was plenty of land for Danny to work with. The money Meggie raised for the plot of land that was sold to the Dock Board was of no concern to anybody except him and his lovely wife.

  ‘It doesn’t matter how much it is you’re asking; I won’t have enough money saved to buy a business this size.’

  ‘One pound,’ Henry said, and Danny had to ask him to repeat himself.

  ‘I’m sorry I thought you said—’

  ‘One pound. Not a penny more, not a penny less, take it or leave it.’

  ‘If I thought you meant it, I would bite your bloody hand off.’ Danny laughed. ‘And you know I would. This is my dream. My own yard.’ Then his pale blue eyes lost their sparkle. ‘I think it’s a bit cruel of you to build up my hopes, only to knock them down again with such a ridiculous price.’

  ‘I am serious,’ Henry answered, his determination obvious in the set of his jaw. ‘I will have the deeds drawn up by the solicitor, everything legal and above board – and I want every penny, in cash.’

  ‘You’re having me on?’ Danny thought he must be dreaming. Things like this didn’t happen to an ordinary bloke like him. Not in real life.

  ‘I’m not kidding you,’ Henry said, giving his unshaven chin a raspy scratch, ‘I owe you more than you will ever know, and I can’t think of anybody more able than you to run this business.’

  ‘But why only a pound?’ Danny asked, waiting for the catch, the bit of information that would pull the rug from under him. Although, thinking on it, that had never been Henry’s style. So why would he change now?

  ‘You’ve put as much, if not more, work into this place over the last few years than I have. This yard is you, and I would never rest easy if anybody else got their greedy mitts on it.’ He sucked hard on the unlit pipe and his face crumpled into a scowl before he reached into his pocket and extracted a well-worn tin.

  ‘You’re talking about the person who’s been threatening you?’ Danny outlined the lace pattern of the tablecloth with his forefinger, unable to meet his uncle’s gaze when he heard Henry let out a small but audible gasp. Danny hadn’t meant to blurt out that he knew Henry was being blackmailed and did not probe the reason why, because he didn’t have a clue. If Henry wanted to tell him that was up to him. But Danny would not fish for explanations. That was not his way.

  ‘Not me, lad,’ Henry said. ‘I’d have stood up to the bugger, challenged ’em, like. But I’ve been sworn to secrecy. I’m not the one in danger of losing everything I hold dear.’ He was quiet for a moment and Danny realised his uncle was going to say no more on the matter.

  ‘One pound, though?’ Danny shook his head, ‘I can’t take it in.’ There was being generous and there was downright madness. ‘Are you sure your head wasn’t affected when you were ill?’

  Henry gave a low chuckle, pushing tobacco into the bowl of his pipe while keeping an ear on alert for the sound of his Meggie’s footsteps; he had no intentions of lighting the pipe. ‘The situation is this, if I sell you the yard, and you pay the asking price, no matter what that price is, then you are the legal owner. No ifs, ands or buts. I can’t tell you what to do with it.’ He put the pipe in his mouth. ‘You could turn it into a Saturday night dance hall – I’d have no say…’

  Danny laughed as the proposition sunk in. ‘That sounds like a good idea,’ he said and bobbed out of the way when Henry threw a polishing cloth at his head.

  ‘Joking apart, you can do whatever takes your fancy. Nobody can ever take the yard from you.’ Lighting a taper from the low burning embers, Henry showed the flame to his pipe, but he still did not light it. Instead he put out the taper on the fender and lay it on the high mantle shelf.

  ‘If I popped my clogs, there is the chance that the Will could be challenged, and believe me, it would be.’ He put the pipe on the table out of temptation’s way. ‘I know my family better than anybody. It’s not in their nature to be benevolent. They would fight tooth and claw to get the business from Meggie.’

  ‘But what will you live on?’ Danny asked, and Henry shook his head, holding out his hand and drawing Meggie into the room.

  ‘My Meggie has made sure we will both be well looked after,’ Henry said, knowing they had the money from the sale of the land. Money that nobody except him and Meggie knew about. Money that she could never be hounded for. Because it was hers and she had the papers to prove it.

  ‘But what about the blackmailer?’ Danny asked. ‘Won’t they still try to extort money from you?’

  Henry shook his head. Depending on what Danny said about taking over the business, he could handle the blackmailer. ‘Leave that to me,’ Henry said. ‘So, what do you say? Do you want the yard?’

  ‘You are serious, aren’t you?’ Danny asked, half laughing, half incredulous when Henry and Meggie nodded. He stood up, gathered them together in his arms and, hugging them both, buried his head in Henry’s shoulder so as not to show the tears running down his face.

  When he looked up, Danny was surprised to see Henry and Aunty Meg also had tears running down their faces.

  ‘What a lot of soppy ha’porths we are,’ Henry said, taking a huge handkerchief from the pocket of his brown corduroy trousers and blowing his nose with such force, Meggie said she thought he was going to blow his brains out. ‘I’ll set the wheels in motion first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Well, don’t go popping your clogs before then.’ Danny laughed, unable to believe his good fortune. ‘Can I tell Evie?’

  ‘Aye, lad, but tell her not to let on to anybody else until after the papers are
signed.’

  22

  The sweet scent of hedgerow stippled with creamy blossom perfumed the balmy summer air and Evie could not think of a better day in her life. Danny told her they needed to be going. The wagon trundled down the bumpy lane, leading to a row of four farm cottages. Evie wondered what it must be like to have all this space to live in. Meggie had offered to look after the office to let Evie have a day out in the countryside.

  ‘Do you think you expand upward when you’ve got more space to grow,’ she asked, ‘because our Jack and Lucy are like beanpoles, I’m obviously the runt of the litter.’

  ‘I think you’re perfect just the way you are,’ Danny said, and Evie took a sideways glance and saw the corners of his mouth curl upwards into an unabashed smile, even though he kept his eyes on the narrow dirt road.

  Evie did not speak. She couldn’t. Trying to get the sense of his words straight in her head, she was more confused than ever. What did he mean by that? she wondered. Looking straight ahead through the dusty windscreen, she tried to force herself to think of other things, anything but what he had just said to her. But the words kept going round inside her head.

  What if he was just being his usual friendly self? She would look a right lemon if she took his words to mean something else, something deeper, and respond in a way that the heroine did on the pictures, by flinging her arms round him and declaring her undying love. He would think she was a bit doolally, especially if he had to explain that he was just making conversation.

  Evie shifted in the seat. Did the words ‘undying love’ just saunter into her head and take up residence?

  ‘We could not have picked a better day,’ Danny said. ‘I love this place, but even more so in the summer.’ Netherford was a quiet, gorse-scented hamlet with red-roofed cottages dotted about the lanes. They passed a sixteenth-century inn called The Wheatsheaf, separated from the medieval church by a small graveyard. ‘I usually go there for a ploughman’s lunch before heading back,’ Danny said, and Evie felt a buzz of excitement in her stomach. She had never eaten at an inn before, and didn’t even know what a ploughman’s lunch was. ‘We could have it outside if you like?’ he said as they passed a post box and telephone box standing like scarlet sentinels guarding the vast fields.