Daughters of the Mersey

by Anne Baker

  DAUGHTERS OF THE MERSEY

  Anne Baker

  Copyright © 2012 Anne Baker

  The right of Anne Baker to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.

  First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012

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

  Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library

  eISBN : 978 0 7553 9150 9

  HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP

  An Hachette UK Company

  338 Euston Road

  London NW1 3BH

  www.headline.co.uk

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About the Author

  Also By

  About the Book

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Chapter Thirty-five

  Chapter Thirty-six

  About the Author

  Anne Baker trained as a nurse at Birkenhead General Hospital, but after her marriage went to live first in Libya and then in Nigeria. She eventually returned to her native Birkenhead where she worked as a Health Visitor for over ten years before taking up writing. She now lives with her husband in Merseyside. Anne Baker’s other Merseyside sagas are all available from Headline and have been highly praised.

  By Anne Baker and available from Headline

  Like Father, Like Daughter

  Paradise Parade

  Legacy of Sins

  Nobody’s Child

  Merseyside Girls

  Moonlight on the Mersey

  A Mersey Duet

  Mersey Maids

  A Liverpool Lullaby

  With a Little Luck

  The Price of Love

  Liverpool Lies

  Echoes Across the Mersey

  A Glimpse of the Mersey

  Goodbye Liverpool

  So Many Children

  A Mansion by the Mersey

  A Pocketful of Silver

  Keep The Home Fires Burning

  Let The Bells Ring

  Carousel of Secrets

  The Wild Child

  A Labour of Love

  The Best of Fathers

  All That Glistens

  Through Rose-Coloured Glasses

  Nancy’s War

  Liverpool Love Song

  Love is Blind

  Daughters of the Mersey

  About the Book

  When Leonie Dransfield’s husband loses everything in the Great Depression, she is forced to get a job to put food on their table. But Steve resents his wife’s success and, trapped in a loveless marriage, Leonie is drawn into the arms of another man. . .

  On discovering she is pregnant, Leonie knows her duty lies with her husband and children, though when Amy is born she brings joy to them all. Then the Second World War leads to Amy’s evacuation and, as the bombs fall on Liverpool, her family must find the strength to survive. . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  Summer 1929

  LEONIE DRANSFIELD HAD UNDRESSED for bed. Feeling confused and worried, she was sitting in front of her dressing table watching Steve, her husband, in her mirror. His movements were slow and awkward and it took him a long time to unstrap his false leg and take it off.

  Without it, he needed his crutches to move about and he kept them propped against the side of their bed. He let his false leg clatter to the floor and heaved himself between the sheets; even now she had to look away from that bare stump.

  During the war, Steve had fought in the trenches and been horribly injured in the winter of 1917. His left leg had had to be amputated above the knee, and though his other wounds had eventually healed, scars had been left not only on his body but on his mind.

  She’d noticed he’d been upset and grumpy over the last few days. He’d said he wasn’t well, that he was plagued by one of his migraines, but now he’d admitted that he’d had this bad news and hadn’t been able to tell her. That made it sound very bad indeed.

  She felt anxiety stir within her. ‘What d’you mean, bad news?’

  ‘You know I’ve sold two shops.’ Steve had inherited a leading antiques business from his family. ‘You know the business went down in the war and that it’s never really recovered.’

  ‘Of course I know the shops have been sold.’ Leonie was impatient, afraid something terrible had happened. ‘You said the money would be a nice little nest egg, it would provide a cushion in bad times and a comfort in our old age, but really we need it now to put food on the table and fuel in the grate. What have you done with it? I thought you intended to hand it over to Hawkes and Harmsworth to invest.’

  The stockbrokers Hawkes and Harmsworth had served the Dransfield family well over the last fifty years. They still looked after the remnants of the wealth they’d made in antiques.

  ‘I tried something new. I went to a different firm.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake! What on earth made you do that?’ Leonie’s heart plummeted. They were desperate for more income. That was why he’d sold the shops in the first place. Surely he hadn’t lost all that money? She could hardly sit still.

  Steve groaned. ‘William Hawkes is so old-fashioned. He puts me into companies that don’t earn much interest.’

  She leapt up to open the bedroom window. ‘He’s honest, Steve. Yes, he may be conservative, but he’s always been mindful of your interests and doesn’t take unnecessary risks with your money.’

  ‘I did it for you and the children.’

  ‘What?’ Leonie could no longer bite back her anger. ‘The last thing I wanted was for you to take risks. You must know that.’

  ‘I’m sorry. We needed more money. I thought I could get it. You know I’ve lost my health and strength, I can’t work like a normal man.’

  Leonie seethed, everything always came back to that.

  She couldn’t help bursting out at him, ‘You were greedy. So not only is there no interest, but the capital has gone too?’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault. It was out-and-out fraud. They were gangsters, out to do me. I’ve been worried stiff this past week.’

  ‘Steve, surely you knew there were fraudsters out there who would cheat you if you gave them half a chance? You knew you could trust
William Hawkes. I can’t believe you’ve done this.’

  Steve looked contrite.

  ‘Have you reported it to the police?’

  ‘Yes, but I don’t think anything will come of it. They didn’t hold out much hope of my getting it back.’

  ‘What’s done is done,’ she said with the resignation she’d learned from married life.

  He was only forty-six but he was gauntly thin with rounded shoulders and sparse mouse-brown hair that was greying. Pain and disappointment had dogged him since the last war. He looked old for his years and she felt full of pity for him, but he didn’t want pity. There was nothing he resented more.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t go on at me, Leonie, I can’t stand that. I know I made a mistake and I truly wish I’d stayed with William Hawkes.’

  She could see tears welling in his eyes and looked away. She mustn’t say any more, he was given to bouts of depression and she didn’t want to make matters worse. He knew well enough he’d been a fool. ‘If it’s gone, it’s better to put it out of your mind.’

  ‘But I can’t. What are we going to do for money? Our income is going down all the time and we’ve got two children to bring up.’

  ‘We’ll manage somehow,’ Leonie said, giving her darkblond hair a perfunctory brushing – a token of her normal routine. ‘We’ll manage,’ she repeated. ‘We always have.’

  She glanced at herself in the mirror and sighed. Worried eyes stared back at her.

  Was her fringe and shoulder-length bob getting a bit girlish for her at thirty-six? She wished she had lustrous curls like her children but they’d inherited those from Steve, though his brown hair was anything but lustrous now. Her hair was almost straight with just enough bend in it to frame her face. At one time, Steve used to say it suited her like this.

  Leonie got into bed beside him but she couldn’t get to sleep. To be defrauded out of the money they’d been relying on brought them to crisis point.

  Leonie had been orphaned at seven years of age and brought up by her Great-Aunt Felicity, who had managed on a small income through thrift and self-sufficiency and using her common sense. Leonie had been brought up to do the same and it was these skills that had helped them survive so far. Steve, on the other hand, had been born to a family that had never gone short. He’d been used to spending money freely and having the best of everything.

  When Leonie had become engaged to Steven Dransfield, her Aunt Felicity had said, ‘How fortunate you are, to be marrying into a family like the Dransfields. You’ll never want for anything.’ Leonie had been of the same opinion and had enjoyed every comfort money could buy during the first few years of her marriage. But the war had changed everything and Aunt Felicity had been proved very wrong.

  Leonie knew well enough how they’d managed so far. Steve’s only brother Raymond had been killed at Mons and Steve had inherited all his family’s wealth. First and foremost was the house they lived in, it had been the Dransfield family home and very comfortable in its day. In addition, he’d received the business that had earned a good living for the family over several generations. As they’d been antique dealers, they’d kept the pieces they’d admired most to furnish it, so he’d inherited many valuable objects too. Most of these he’d already sold into the trade because he owned the shops where the value of antiques and fine art could easily be realised.

  Steve had been a boarder at a public school and though his children weren’t having that luxury, they were at fee-paying day schools. His mother’s jewellery was the first thing he’d sold to meet that expense.

  When they’d had a plumbing problem, Steve had taken an eighteenth-century French ormolu mantel clock to the shop. When a tree had blown down in a gale and taken a few slates off the roof, he’d taken the George III silver tea and coffee service to pay the bill.

  Leonie tossed and turned in bed, wondering how on earth they would manage now.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LEONIE AND STEVE HAD been married just before the Great War began. At that time his parents had been alive and so had his brother. Leonie felt full of love for Steve and knew he felt the same way about her. She expected marriage to transform her life. She’d looked forward to being a good wife and taking care of Steve and the home he’d rented for them. They’d both hoped that, in time, they’d have a family of their own.

  Steve had been working for his father in the family antiques business which had been started by his great-grandfather in the last century. At the time, they’d been running an auction house and they owned four shops. The flagship of the business was in central Liverpool.

  The family lived in some style on the Esplanade at New Ferry, in a spacious single-storey house they called Mersey Reach, built to their own specifications about the middle of Queen Victoria’s reign. It had been designed with many Georgian features, and had six bedrooms, a music room, a garden of two acres and accommodation for live-in staff in the cellar. It was in a very convenient position being within easy walking distance of the ferry terminus to Liverpool.

  At the beginning of the war Steve hadn’t wanted to join up, he’d just wanted to get on with his life and stay with Leonie, their future had looked rosy. He’d had to struggle with his conscience, believing he should do his bit but his father had persuaded him not to, saying he needed him in the business. When the avalanche of volunteers dried up in 1916, conscription came in and he’d had to go.

  The war had marred everything and brought unexpected hardships. Leonie felt it had torn them apart. Left on her own, she gave up the tenancy of the house Steve had rented on their marriage and returned to live with her Aunt Felicity because she was now in her eighties and in failing health. There was little food to be had in the shops and it was rising rapidly in price. By the time Miles, their first child, was born in 1917, Steve was fighting in the trenches in France.

  Miles was a Dransfield family name and Steve’s choice. He was a lovely strong baby with a lot of dark hair that had a reddish tinge. His face was round and rarely without a smile and he slept all night from an early age.

  Leonie was kept busy caring for her baby and her aunt and looking after the house. Every evening when both were settled for the night she wrote to Steve, and his regular letters gave point to her day.

  Then suddenly his letters stopped coming. Leonie tried to believe it was a problem with the post and that several would come together. The empty days stretched on until she was almost out of her mind with worry.

  It was over a month before she heard that he’d been injured on the Somme and repatriated to a hospital near London. Her first feelings were of utter relief. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

  When she went down to see him, she was shocked to find him in pain and looking so ill. He had been caught in shellfire which had killed three men and injured two others. He had abdominal injuries caused by flying debris, as well as major injuries to his leg which had meant amputation.

  His doctors told Leonie they saw no reason why he shouldn’t make a good recovery and cope with his disability. He spent almost a year in different hospitals before being sent to Woodley Grange, a mansion near Chester that had been converted to provide rehabilitation and convalescence for injured soldiers. He was near enough for Leonie to visit him often, and though his doctors continued to talk hopefully of his recovery, he’d begun to lose heart.

  Steve’s parents, Edward and Isobel, were worried about him too and they did their best to help her. Edward hired a carriage to drive Leonie to and from the train station and Isobel liked to have charge of the baby. But only a few months later she began to complain of feeling unwell. Nothing seemed to help and eventually she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. It was a terrible shock to them all.

  There were other problems too. The Dransfields had always employed a cook and a housemaid, but they both gave notice in the same month. The war had resulted in a dearth of domestic help as munitions factories were advertising for workers and paying higher wages for shorter hours. Leon
ie found them a woman who would come on three mornings a week to do the rough work but it wasn’t enough. Edward did what he could but Leonie had to go in every day to help with the cooking. With Miles and Aunt Felicity to take care of too, they were both finding it exhausting.

  One day Edward and Isobel suggested she move in with them and take over the running of the family home. It seemed the only logical course. Leonie was fond of her in-laws and they got on well together.

  Great-Aunt Felicity was moved into a room with a lovely view over the river, but she survived there for only another six weeks. Leonie cared for her and sat with her when she was dying and found it emotionally exhausting. Steve’s mother was failing too. She spent the last months of her life when the weather was fine on a day bed in the summer house.

  When Isobel passed away in her sleep one night, Leonie was grief-stricken and she and her father-in-law comforted each other as best they could.

  Edward was coming up to retirement age but carried on working because a lot of his staff had joined up, but in truth, there was less work to do, the business was suffering.

  Leonie longed for the end of the war but focused her mind on visiting Steve in Woodley Grange, her daily chores and caring for Edward and her little son. Miles was thriving, a happy little boy who brought great pleasure to them both and made them hope for a better future.

  When the war ended, the War Office granted Steve a pension of £1. 10/- per week and Leonie brought him home to Mersey Reach to join the family. By the end of 1919 he’d recovered enough to return to work to become one of their buyers. It entailed a lot of travelling and attending auctions to buy good-quality antiques to stock their shops and both Leonie and Edward noticed he found the work tiring.

  The only good thing that happened in the family in the aftermath of war was that Leonie gave birth to a daughter. They called her June and she brought comfort to Steve and his father. She was a pretty baby with fair hair and big round blue eyes and both Edward and Steve loved to sit and hold her in their arms. Leonie blessed the fact that there was a family business to support them and devoted herself to the children and the running of the house.