by Maureen Lee
202
I
'They've got to learn to adjust to each other, else life will be one big fight.' There'd been no need for Annie and Lauri to adjust; they hadn't exchanged a cross word since the day they'd met.
Oh, she was so lucky
There was a framed photo of their wedding on the mantelpiece. To most people's disappointment, Annie had decided she didn't want a big posh do, about twenty guests at the most: the Gallaghers, the Delgados, Marie, one or two friends from work.
'Is that your idea or Lauri's?' Dot snapped.
'Mine,' lied Annie. Cecy had offered to pay for the reception and Uncle Bert for the cars, but Lauri felt as if he would be accepting charity. The bride was supposed to pay for the wedding, but Annie hadn't got a penny saved. It seemed silly for Lauri to spend hundreds of pounds when there were still things to buy for the house: neither of the spare bedrooms were furnished, and he wanted a garage built on the side. Anyroad, Lauri said he would prefer a quiet affair. It made such sense that Annie gave up the idea of the wedding dress which she'd designed years ago - very regal, slightly Edwardian, with a tiny bustle - and made herself a simple calf-length frock in fine, off-white jersey, with a high neck and bishop sleeves. Cecy loaned her a white hat covered with frothy white roses.
Sylvia was the only bridesmaid, and considerably put out when told to wear something plain. She thought she was being awkward when she bought a scarlet costume, but it turned out just right for a December wedding.
Annie traced Lauri's features on the photo with her finger. He was smiling, the contented smile of someone entirely happy with his lot. He was always happy, Lauri. His only dour words were for the politicians on television. Otherwise, he exuded good humour all day
long. It was impossible not to be happy when Lauri was around.
A loud crash sounded through the separating wall, followed by a scream. Gary was still crying. Annie hurried next door.
Valerie was in the kitchen, almost in tears, a baby's bottle in her hand. The room, identical to Annie's own kitchen in reverse, was in chaos. Every surface was covered with dishes, clean and dirty - Valerie never bothered to put them away. The fronts of the white units were streaked with coffee and tea. On the floor were two buckets full of dirty nappies soaking, and a basket of clean ones waiting to be hung out. Also on the floor, the reason for the crash, an upturned drawer and a scattered assortment of cutlery in urgent need of polishing.
'The whole bloody drawer came out when I pulled,' Valerie groaned.
'Never mind,' Annie bent down, scooped the cutlery into the drawer and shoved it back in. 'What's the matter with Gary?'
'Bloody little sod wants his dinner, that's what, and I can't find the brush to clean his bottle.' Valerie had been a nervous wreck since Gary was born; her milk had dried up so she couldn't breastfeed.
'I think I saw the bottle brush in the drawer.' Annie took the bottle out of Valerie's hand, cleaned it thoroughly, stuck a funnel in the neck, discovered the milk powder amidst the mess and measured out three spoonsful. 'Is there any boiled water?'
'In the kettle, I'm not sure if it's too hot or too cold.'
The water felt just right. Annie poured some over the back of her hand the way it said to do in her baby book. Then she filled the bottle up to eight ounces, found a teat soaking in a bowl on the window sill, and gave the bottle a good shake. 'Would you like me to give it him?'
'You'd better. My hands are trembling.'
The carrycot was in the lounge, which was as untidy as the kitchen. Gary's little screwed-up face was bright red with rage. Annie picked him up and shoved the bottle in his mouth just as he was preparing for another mighty yell.
'Whew!' Instead of tidying up whilst she had a few minute's peace, Valerie threw herself onto the black velvet settee and lit a cigarette. She wore jeans and pumps and one of Kevin's old shirts, covered in stains. Her short dark hair was uncombed and her face bare of make-up. 'Look at me!' she groaned. 'I'm a sight. You'd never think this time last year I was a career woman who wore tailored suits and wouldn't have been seen dead without lipstick. Don't have children, Annie. They ruin your life.' Valerie had been manageress of a travel agency.
'It's a bit late to tell me that,' Annie said drily.
'Of course, I forgot. In a few months, your lovely house will be just like mine.'
Never! There was no way she would have a kitchen like Valerie's. Not only that, she would feed her baby regularly, breastieed, and take it for long walks if it cried - Gary always calmed down in his pram, but Valerie was too disorganised to take him.
Gary finished his milk, so Annie laid him on her shoulder and began to rub his back.
'You should have let him suck it longer,' Valerie complained. 'At least it keeps him quiet.'
'But he'll only get more wind, sucking at an empty bottle.' Which was something else she'd read in the baby book.
'Aren't you already the perfect mother!'
There was a sarcastic edge to Valerie's remark that Annie resented. After all, she'd only come to help. She didn't have to be in this rather smelly house trying to
raise a burp from an equally smelly baby. Hurt, she stared silently at the brick fireplace, almost identical to the one Lauri had built. The Cunninghams had taken the standard tile one out and had this installed as soon as they'd seen next door's.
'Sorry, Annie,' Valerie said stiffly. 'My nerves are at breaking point. I had a terrible row with my mother on the phone this morning, and last night Kevin and I had an even worse one.'
'I know, we heard.' It was something to do with Kevin wanting a clean shirt every day, which Valerie felt was unreasonable considering all the washing she had to do for their son.
'He seems to expect his life to go on exactly as it did before; his dinner on the table, shirts ironed and the house looking like something out of a magazine. He even had the nerve to suggest I weed the garden in my spare time. Spare time, I ask you!'
Annie and Lauri had listened to the subsequent row. Lauri smiled. 'If I'd known the Cunninghams were going to live next door, I would have asked for extra thick walls.'
Lauri was nothing like Kevin. He brought her a cup of tea in bed each morning, helped with the housework at weekends, and had no inhibitions about washing dishes just because he was a man. He laughed the time she burned the rice pudding, and didn't give two hoots when she made a terrible mess of her first omelette and they ended up with scrambled egg.
Gary burped and began to bawl. 'I'll change his nappy, if I can find a clean one, and take him for a walk,' Valerie said tiredly.
Annie offered to change the nappy whilst Valerie had another cigarette. It was difficult to get the terrycloth square around Gary's flailing legs and even harder to fasten the pin without piercing his tummy.
'One of these days I'll stab the little bugger, so help me,' his weary mother remarked.
Ten minutes later, she went marching off pushing the big expensive pram, her baby dressed only in his nappy and vest because she couldn't find clean clothes. Everywhere was still in a mess and there was no sign of a meal being prepared for Kevin.
Annie presumed there would be another row that night.
Sara Menin, weighing eight pounds, arrived without a single hitch on the last day of September.
'Isn't she beautiful!' Annie whispered the first night home. Sara was fast asleep in her cot beside their bed. She had pale fair hair with a touch of red and a tiny, almost grown-up face.
'Like her mother.' Lauri kissed Annie on the cheek. He stared at Sara as if he couldn't believe he was a father. 'It's like a dream come true,' he murmured softly. 'My wife, my child - my family.'
'Why didn't you get married again years ago?' Annie asked curiously, at the same time thinking how terrible it would have been if he had.
'What a strange question!' He looked amused. 'Because I was waiting for Annie Harrison to come along.' He kissed her other cheek.
'But you decided to buy a house.'
'I was fe
d up with lodgings, that's why. You appeared quite fortuitously right after I had made the decision.'
Sylvia always found the baby most peculiar. 'She's so helpless. Horses can walk the minute they're bom. You've got to do everything for her.'
'Well, Cecy had to do everything for you. You didn't come leaping from her womb and go for a run.' Annie transferred two-month-old Sara to her other breast.
'I never thought the day would come when I'd see you breastfeed, Annie. Does it hurt when she sucks?'
'No. Actually, it's rather nice.'
'Ugh!' Sylvia shuddered. The Bohemian look had gone since she entered public relations, and she wore a short green shift dress with a thick gold chain slung around her slim hips. She looked incredibly elegant with her long blonde hair tied in a knot on top of her head and dangling jade earrings. Her white mini was parked on the drive outside. 'I'm only joking. I half envy you, having Sara. She's lovely.'
'Only half envy me?' Annie raised her eyebrows.
'Well, you're missing everything, aren't you? Liverpool's the most famous city on the planet. The atmosphere in the clubs is terrific. You should hear the way girls scream at the Beatles nowadays.'
'Do you scream?'
'Jaysus, no, I'm too old. But,' she added wistfully, 'sometimes I wish we were still teenagers. I wouldn't mind a good scream.'
It seemed very juvenile to Annie. She listened to the old groups on the radio, but they seemed to belong to a world she'd left behind.
'Hey, you'll never guess who I saw the other day in the New Court,' Sylvia said. 'Jeremy Rupert.'
'I hope you spat in his eye for me.'
'I was contemplating doing that very thing, except he was with this gorgeous guy. I said "Hello" in the hope he'd introduce me, which he did. The gorgeous guy's a solicitor called Eric Church.' Sylvia smacked her lips. 'He's a Catholic and I'm going out with him on Saturday.'
Annie felt she'd been rather traitorous. 'I hope that doesn't mean Jeremy Rupert's likely to come to the wedding if you end up marrying this gorgeous Eric,' she grumbled.
After Sylvia had gone, Annie put Sara in her Moses basket and went to fetch the washing in; the gusty November wind had blown everything dry. Valerie was bringing in her own washing at the same time. After the initial turmoil, Gary had turned out to be a lovely baby. His nature had become quite sunny and he rarely cried. The Cunninghams were trying for another baby and Valerie was already a week late with her period.
They waved to each other and Valerie looked inclined to stop for a chat, but Annie explained she had to get Lauri's dinner ready.
'I thought he was working in Manchester at the moment?'
'He is, but it doesn't take long to get home. I'm about to make a cottage pie.'
Lauri Menin belonged to a co-operative with four other carpenters, skilled tradesmen like himself. Sometimes, all five might work together on the one site if a large estate was being built, or else they took on jobs which required just one or two men, jobs that could last for as little as a single day. Fred Quillen, the oldest and longest-standing member of the co-op, handled the bookings with scrupulous fairness, and the Quillens' address and telephone number was on the sign over the yard in Bootle where the materials and vans were kept. The men were often fully booked for months ahead. At the end of the month, their earnings were pooled so each man earned the same as the others, barring overtime which went to the individual himself.
At the moment, Lauri was the only one to be employed on the building of a luxury house on the outskirts of Manchester. It was dark by the time he arrived home. 'And how's our daughter been today?' he asked, after he'd kissed his wife affectionately.
'Fine. She couldn't possibly be finer.'
'The food smells nice, my love, I'm starving.'
Annie bustled round, making fresh tea before sitting down to the cottage pie. When they'd finished, Lauri went into the lounge whilst she washed the dishes. She removed her apron and went to join him. He was on the settee reading the paper and looked up, smiling briefly when she came in. Next door, the Cunninghams were having their nightly row, but in number seven everything was quiet. Sara slept peacefully upstairs. Lauri didn't approve of having the television on unless there was something they specifically wanted to watch.
Out of the blue, Annie had the strangest vision. Instead of Lauri, she saw her dad sitting in front of the fireplace of the silent house in Orlando Street. For a moment, she felt quite dizzy. What on earth had triggered off such an awful memory? Then Lauri patted the settee and said, 'Come on, love', and the vision went, but later she found herself thinking about Sylvia and the Cavern, the groups they'd travelled the length and breadth of Liverpool to see, the dances, the tennis club.
'Do you think we could go out one night?' she asked. Dot had already offered to babysit.
'Of course, my love. Where to, the pictures?'
'The pictures would be fine.' She'd look in the Echo to see what was on. 'And you know I couldn't think of anything to have for me birthday? Well, if we can afford it, I'd like a record player.'
'Then a record player it will be,' said Lauri.
There were three very good reasons for throwing a party: it was their second wedding anniversary, it was Christmas, and Labour had recently won a General Election. Dot's new heart-throb, Harold Wilson, was Prime Minister.
Sylvia said to ask twice the number of guests they could accommodate because half were bound not to
come. The trouble was, everyone had come and there was scarcely room to stand. If it had been summer, they could have opened the French windows and let everyone spill out into the garden, but it was December and snowing outside and guests had spilled out into the hallway and the breakfast room instead. There were several people sitting on the stairs.
Still, everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. Valerie and Chris Andrews were dancing to 'Good Golly, Miss Molly'. Lauri, the perfect genial host, beamed at everyone in sight.
'This is the gear, sis.' Marie came into the kitchen and helped herself to a sausage roll.
Annie was frantically cutting sandwiches. She hadn't done nearly enough food. 'I thought you didn't say things like "the gear" any more.'
'Scouse has become really fashionable in London. People are always asking me to say something in a Liverpool accent. When I tell them my sister was at the Cavern the night it opened, they're really impressed.'
Marie had arrived that morning and would stay for the next few months. She had a small part in the pantomime at the Empire. Pantomime wasn't what Marie had in mind when she'd gone to London in search of stardom, but, as she said with a shrug, it was better than nothing. She'd brought an actor friend who was staying just for Christmas, Clive Hoskins, a sunburnt Adonis with perfect features and a halo of golden curls. Annie couldn't very well object when they took it for granted they would occupy the twin beds in the spare room. Her sister's morals were her own affair. When Annie asked if it was serious, Marie merely said, 'Clive is a dear friend. I'm very fond of him.'
Marie grimaced. 'What possessed you to wear that dress, sis? It looks frumpy, particularly with those flat
shoes. And why don't you do something with your hair? It's been like that since you were little.'
'Oh, do I look awful?' Annie put a distraught hand to her head. 'I intended putting me hair up, but people started arriving before I'd got me make-up on. I made the frock for me twenty-first. I thought it looked dead smart.'
'That length went out of fashion years ago.' Marie looked very smart indeed, in a black form-fitting tailored dress with a daring deep V neckline revealing an inch of black scalloped lace. The skirt finished just above her knees. Her dark hair was cut severely, the same length all round, level with her eyebrows and the tops of her ears. Dot remarked it looked Hke a plant pot.
'I'll ask Lauri if I can buy material for some new frocks.'
'Don't asky sis. Tell him you need more clothes.'
Sylvia came floating into the kitchen, in a dazzling pink dress styled l
ike a toga, which left one gleaming shoulder bare. The hem was edged with silver braid, and she wore spiky-heeled silver sandals. Marie immediately made an excuse to leave, and Annie wondered if they could still remember why they disliked each other.
'More wine,' Sylvia sang. 'White for me and red for Eric, and for goodness' sake, Annie, get out of the kitchen and enjoy yourself. We're all having far too good a time to want food. You look harassed.'
'Oh, Marie said I looked frumpy, now I look harassed. I'm not exactly the perfect hostess.'
'No-one expects you to be perfect.' She took hold of Annie's arm. 'Come on.'
'Will you finish the sandwiches?'
'No I bloody won't. Hang the sandwiches and have a glass of wine.'
ZI2
'It'll only make me sick. Everything makes me sick at the moment.' She was not quite three months pregnant, but having this baby was already very different from the first time. She felt wretched every morning and almost everything she ate upset her stomach. If she'd known she would feel this bad, she wouldn't have suggested the party, but the invitations had gone out weeks ago.
Sylvia dragged her into the lounge, where Eric Church was leaning against the wall, smoking. Annie had taken an immediate dislike to Eric. Perhaps it was only natural not to like the man who was to marry your best friend; after all, Sylvia had been scathing about Lauri. So far, Annie had kept her thoughts to herself.
He reminded her of a Regency buck, and wasn't so much handsome as attractive, with a thin aquiline face and sleeked-back fair hair. Tall and rather dashing, she imagined him in a frock coat with a lacy cravat and a whip twitching in his long white hand.
