by Maureen Lee
In my dream I would watch him slowly undo his belt buckle, hear its tiny click, the feathery smooth sound the leather made as he pulled it through the loops of his trousers until it dangled from his hand like a snake.
Then he would reach down to drag me out of bed, but this was a dream and I wasn’t there!
Oh, the look on his face then! I savoured it. I felt triumphant.
At this point, I usually woke up bathed in perspiration, my heart beating fiercely, still triumphant, but at the same time slightly sick.
I’d escaped!
Sometimes, though, the dream continued, just as life had continued in the days when the dream wasn’t a dream but real.
I knew that when he came back from the pub, always drunk, he would scratch around downstairs, poking here and there, in the dirty washing, through the toys, searching for something that would give him an excuse to let rip with a thrashing. He liked to have an excuse. He’d find the mark of a felt-tipped pen on a tablecloth that Mam hadn’t had time to wash, paint dropped on a frock at school, the arm off a doll, or toys not put away properly. Anything could trigger the sound of those slithering footsteps on the stairs.
There were other nights, the best ones, when he would fall asleep in the chair – according to Mam, he worked hard – or he might watch television. Looking back, my memory softened slightly by time, this probably happened more often than I used to think.
In the extended dream I still wasn’t there, but now my little sister was in the other bed, and it was she who bore the brunt of our father’s anger, or frustration, or excitement, or self-loathing, or whatever it was that made him want to beat the life out of his wife and children, so that his dark shadow lay heavily over our house, even when he wasn’t there.
There would be no feeling of triumph when I woke up, just desolation and despair. Would the dreams never end? Would I ever forget? For the rest of my life, would I, Millie Cameron, never stop wishing that I was invisible?
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 job, 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 fro
m 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.
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.
* * *
MAUREEN LEE
* * *
MAUREEN LEE IS ONE OF THE BEST-LOVED SAGA WRITERS AROUND. All her novels are set in Liverpool and the world she evokes is always peopled with characters you’ll never forget. Her familiarity with Liverpool and its people brings the terraced streets and tight-knit communities vividly to life in her books. Maureen is a born storyteller and her many fans love her for her powerful tales of love and life, tragedy and joy in Liverpool.
* * *
The Girl from Bootle
* * *
Born into a working-class family in Bootle, Liverpool, Maureen Lee spent her early years in a terraced house near the docks – an area that was relentlessly bombed during the Second World War. As a child she was bombed out of the house in Bootle and the family were forced to move.
Maureen left her convent school at 15 and wanted to become an actress. However, her shocked mother, who said that it was ‘as bad as selling your body on the streets’, put her foot down and Maureen had to give up her dreams and go to secretarial college instead.
As a child, Maureen was bombed out of her terraced house in Bootle
* * *
Family Life
* * *
A regular theme in her books is the fact that apparently happy homes often conceal pain and resentment and she sometimes draws on her own early life for inspiration. ‘My mother always seemed to disapprove of me – she never said “well done” to me. My brother was the favourite,’ Maureen says.
I know she would never have approved of my books
As she and her brother grew up they grew apart. ‘We just see things differently in every way,’ says Maureen. This, and a falling out during the difficult time when her mother was dying, led to an estrangement that has lasted 24 years. ‘Despite the fact that I didn’t see eye-to-eye with my mum, I loved her very much. I deserted my family and lived in her flat in Liverpool after she went into hospital for the final time. My brother, who she thought the world of, never went near. Towards the end when she was fading she kept asking where he was. To comfort her, I had to pretend that he’d been to see her the day before, which was awful. I found it hard to get past that.’
* * *
Freedom – Moving on to a Family of Her Own
* * *
Maureen is well known for writing with realism about subjects like motherhood: ‘I had a painful time giving birth to my children – the middle one was born in the back of a two-door car. So I know things don’t always go as planned.’
My middle son was born in the back of a car
The twists and turns of Maureen’s life have been as interesting as the plots of her books. When she met her husband, Richard, he was getting divorced, and despite falling instantly in love and getting engaged after only two weeks, the pair couldn’t marry. Keen that Maureen should escape her strict family home, they moved to London and lived together before marrying. ‘Had she known, my mother would never have forgiven me. She never knew that Richard had been married before.’ The Lees had to pretend they were married even to their landlord. Of course, they did marry as soon as possible and have had a very happy family life.
* * *
Success at Last
* * *
Despite leaving school at fifteen, Maureen was determined to succeed as a writer. Like Kitty in Kitty and Her Sisters and Millie in Dancing in the Dark, she went to night school and ended up getting two A levels. ‘I think it’s good to “better yourself”. It gives you confidence,’ she says. After her sons grew up she had the time to pursue her dream, but it took several years and a lot of disappointment before she was successful. ‘I was determined to succeed. My husband was one hundred per cent supportive. I wrote lots of articles and short stories. I also started a saga which was eventually called Stepping Stones. Then Orion commissioned me to finish it, it was published – and you know the rest.’
‘I think it’s good to “better yourself”. It gives you confidence’
What are your memories of your early years in Bootle?
Of being poor, but not poverty-stricken. Of women wearing shawls instead of coats. Of knowing everybody in the street. Of crowds gathering outside houses in the case of a funeral or a wedding, or if an ambulance came to collect a patient, who was carried out in a red blanket. I longed to be such a patient, but when I had diptheria and an ambulance came for me, I was too sick to be aware of the crowds. There were street parties, swings on lamp-pos
ts, hardly any traffic, loads of children playing in the street, dogs without leads. Even though we didn’t have much money, Christmas as a child was fun. I’m sure we appreciated our few presents more than children do now.
What was it like being young in Liverpool in the 1950s?
The late fifties were a wonderful time for my friends and me. We had so many places to go: numerous dance halls, The Philharmonic Hall, The Cavern Club, theatres, including The Playhouse where you could buy tickets for ninepence. We were crushed together on benches at the very back. As a teenager I loved the theatre – I was in a dramatic society. I also used to make my own clothes, which meant I could have the latest fashions in just the right sizes, which I loved. Sometimes we’d go on boat trips across the water to New Brighton or on the train to Southport. We’d go for the day and visit the fairground and then go to the dance hall in the evening.
We clicked instantly and got engaged two weeks later
I met Richard at a dance when he asked my friend Margaret up. When she came back she said ‘Oh, he was nice.’ And then somebody else asked her to dance – she was very glamorous, with blonde hair – still is, as it happens. So Richard asked me to dance because she had gone! We clicked instantly and got engaged two weeks later. I’m not impulsive generally, but I just knew that he was the one.
Do you consider yourself independent and adventurous like Annemarie in The Leaving of Liverpool or Kitty in Kitty and her Sisters?
