Daughters of the Mersey

by Anne Baker

  Ralph had said he’d pick her up at the ferry terminal, and she saw him sitting in his car as she ran down. He got out to greet her and give her a box of chocolates. He really knew how to treat a woman. She had to tell him about her ten o’clock curfew or she wouldn’t be allowed to do this again. He didn’t seem surprised.

  ‘Would it be easier to meet me during the day?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, much easier.’

  ‘Then what about tomorrow afternoon?’

  Of course she jumped at the chance.

  For years Leonie had been telling herself that renting the shop had been the right thing to do, her business was growing and Elaine was achieving her ambition. It had been a success for them both, but what of her children? She didn’t think it had been good for them. She’d never had enough time to care for them properly and left far too much to Mrs Killen and sometimes to Steve.

  Leonie didn’t know why the relationship between Milo and Steve had gone so wrong. Milo had not been happy throughout his teens and there’d been constant conflict between them. He’d been inclined to stand up to his father and answer back and Steve had always been a very strict parent, stricter with Milo than he’d been with the girls.

  Milo had not been academic; he’d not done well at school. What he enjoyed was messing about in boats. He’d wanted to join the merchant navy when he was sixteen and asked his father if he could train on the Conway which was moored in front of their house. Often they heard whistles blowing on board and saw the boys rowing towards Rock Ferry pier.

  When the Dido was eventually launched on the Mersey, Milo was in his element. He spent long hours out on the river or at the Yacht Club. In spite of his promise, he put less effort into his schoolwork and it showed. After some very bad exam results Steve told him he was wasting his time and would be better off working in the business.

  Despite Leonie’s misgivings, George Courtney was asked to find him a place in the firm and Milo duly started. Leonie knew Milo loved his dinghy and was saving every penny he could from his wages to buy a bigger boat. Almost a year later, she took George aside to ask how Milo was getting on and whether he was enjoying the job.

  ‘I think he is,’ George said. ‘He’s popular with the girls he works with, and he’s trying hard and coping. He’ll be fine, Leonie, you don’t need to worry about him.’

  She was relieved to hear that and thought he was settling at last.

  Leonie found June quite difficult too. She’d wanted to leave school when she was sixteen and had talked about getting a job. Leonie told her she’d be better staying on at school, and Steve fully agreed with that, but her school work was going down too. She was taking little interest in it.

  Steve thought she wanted to start work in the business and asked George to find her a job in the Liverpool shop, but she refused that vehemently. It seemed she wanted to do things her way.

  Leonie told her she wouldn’t get a decent job unless she had some skill to offer. Steve thought they’d be able to employ her in a secretarial capacity in the business and eventually it was agreed that she could leave school if she went to secretarial college.

  June went out by herself a good deal and often arranged to absent herself from meals. She said she was with her old school friend Peggy or the other girls on her commercial course. At one time, she’d been keen on coming to Leonie’s shop, but she rarely came these days. June had definitely made a life for herself and she wanted to be allowed to get on with it.

  She found, too, that Milo had not settled as she’d hoped. He sold Dido to buy a second-hand fishing boat called the Vera May and admitted that his ambition was to cut loose from the antiques business and earn his living as a fisherman. It was thirty-eight feet long and had a cuddy instead of a cabin. He spent his next summer holiday trying to do just that.

  ‘You’re a fool,’ Steve told him, ‘you’ll never be able to earn enough.’

  ‘I can’t argue with Pa,’ he told his mother, ‘but I need to try. It’s what I want to do.’

  Milo found that the fishing industry was well organised on Merseyside. There were larger, more efficient boats in the fishing fleet and the only reason Milo had been able to afford the Vera May was that it was too small for the job. There was a fish market where the fish Milo caught could be sold, but they dealt with large amounts. He tried it but his catch looked puny by comparison with the rest and brought him little money.

  Also, he’d found that he had to go out into the Irish Sea to fish because there were few fish in the tidal estuary of the Mersey that could survive the ever-changing mix of salt and fresh water, and that increased the cost of each trip. He tried selling his catch direct to the retail fish stalls in the market, but the owners were in the habit of getting out of bed at five o’clock to buy their stock in the wholesale market. Unless Milo could guarantee a regular supply, they weren’t interested.

  Leonie knew Milo had had his dream for the future shattered. Commercial fishing on such a small scale was not an economic proposition. It was an added hurt that his father had been right.

  One evening, while the family were round the table eating supper, June said, ‘I want to go out with the girls straight from college tomorrow night, so I won’t be home until late.’ Mum gave her a rather suspicious look and Pa started the usual grilling about where they planned to go, but June had expected that and had the answers to soothe him.

  She had to listen to the usual fussing about too many late nights and be sure to be home by ten. She pleaded for an extension and it was grudgingly given when she pointed out that it was difficult for her to come out of the cinema before the big picture finished when her friends would want to see the end. She breathed a sigh of relief when it was over. At least she was now free to spend all tomorrow evening with Ralph.

  She was head over heels in love with him and believed he felt the same about her. She got into bed and snuggled down, still thinking about all he meant to her. June was managing to keep her love affair a secret. She wasn’t finding it easy, but only Milo had found out and she’d sworn him to secrecy. He said, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing. Pa will crucify you if he finds out.’

  She’d had a very close escape last Saturday. Amy had been bored with her own company and after supper when she was changing to go out, Amy had nagged to go with her. She’d fobbed her off to run down to the old ferry terminal where Ralph had arranged to pick her up.

  Amy had followed her out of the house without her knowing. Fortunately, Ralph had walked up to the sweet shop to buy cigarettes. As he’d waited to be served he’d stood watching for her just inside the door. He attracted June’s attention and had turned back to the counter when Amy caught up with June inside the shop.

  June almost jumped out of her skin, but realised in time that Amy thought she was waiting to be served too. Without a word, she grabbed her hand and ran her back home. Milo was in the old summerhouse near the garden gate with a couple of friends. He’d banned Amy from going near it and normally June stayed clear, but that night Milo grasped the problem and let Amy stay for an hour.

  June still felt shaky when she went back to the sweet shop to find Ralph waiting for her outside. ‘That was a close one.’ He smiled.

  ‘Luck was on our side.’ She took a deep steadying breath. ‘A split second earlier and she’d have seen I was meeting you.’

  He tucked June’s arm through his and they ran down to his car, laughing. But she was beginning to feel guilty about hiding this most important part of her life from Pa and Mum. She should never have started doing this.

  CHAPTER TEN

  AMY LOVED SCHOOL BUT she also loved the freedom of school holidays when she could play all day. She knew her mother did her best to take time off so that she could be at home with her during the holidays.

  ‘But with the business to run, love,’ she said, ‘I’m afraid there are days when it isn’t possible.’

  Amy didn’t mind Mum not being there. Pa always was, but he stayed in his room and didn’t in
terfere with her. Mum asked Elaine to invite her to her house to play with the twins. Amy wasn’t keen on them, they were babies and they always had someone looking after them who bossed her around as though she was their age.

  Amy wanted to play with Pat. Her mother didn’t go to work and said she was happy to have Amy at Beechwood House as Pat needed somebody to play with in the school holidays, and who better than Amy. She liked going to Beechwood, there was always something going on there because Pat had three older sisters. They didn’t always let her and Pat play with them and tended to push them out of their circle, but at lunchtime they always included Amy if she was there.

  She and Pat liked to drift from one house to the other and play in the gardens or on the shore. Mum was always telling her to be good. She was allowed to go to the sweet shop, but she mustn’t go far by herself.

  ‘And don’t get into mischief. June will be at home too, her holidays almost coincide, don’t they? She’s going to keep an eye on you.’

  But Mum didn’t know June was always going out and often couldn’t be bothered with them.

  In the Easter holidays, Amy and Pat broke one of Mum’s firmest rules. They took off their shoes and socks and walked out half a mile across the Mersey mud to Milo’s boat, paddling the last few yards through the tide to reach it. It was easy to climb on board because the Vera May was beached on her side with her deck on a slant.

  To be so far out from the shore was a lovely change and great fun; the breeze was brisk and smelled of the sea and brought the sound of a pipe band from the deck of the Conway which was at its mooring close by. Curiosity led Amy and Pat to search through Milo’s possessions in the cabin. They found tea in a jar, two tins of condensed milk and a biscuit tin with ginger biscuits inside. They ate them all.

  Amy had given no thought to the state of the tide until she felt the Vera May level up and begin to float on the deepening water. The tide had come in without either of them noticing and water was swirling round the boat and already looked too deep to paddle through. The mud, still showing their footprints, seemed tantalisingly far away.

  Amy could feel her heart pounding, she was scared stiff, but she put on a brave front. ‘We’ll have to swim. It isn’t far.’

  ‘You know I can’t swim,’ Pat wailed and grabbed her arm. ‘Don’t leave me here.’

  Amy hesitated. ‘The longer we stay, the deeper it’ll get.’

  The safety of the shore suddenly seemed far away. She could see her house, the end one of a short row with their gardens sloping down to the Esplanade. Several children were playing on the sand below.

  ‘That’s Peter Jones,’ Pat gulped, ‘and Betty Waters. She lives next door to me.’ She cupped her hands round her mouth and yelled, ‘Betty! Help, we’re marooned. Tell my mum.’ The breeze whipped her words away and the children on the shore went on digging.

  Amy fetched some towels from the cabin. ‘Wave this,’ she said, pushing one at Pat. ‘And shout as loud as you can.’

  They shouted and screamed until they were hoarse. Eventually the children noticed them and waved back. ‘We’re marooned,’ they bellowed.

  At last they saw Betty swing herself easily up the high wall of the Esplanade using the iron stays. All the children living in those houses could do that, they climbed up and down several times a day. Betty slid through the railings and ran up the path to the front door of Amy’s house. Her knock brought June out to the garden; with her hand shading her eyes, she looked towards them.

  They waved their towels and shouted louder than ever. Then they saw June go back inside and Betty Waters climb down to the sand.

  ‘What do we do now?’ Pat wanted to know.

  ‘We’ll have to wait. June knows where we are.’

  ‘Is it twelve hours before the tide goes out again?’

  Amy wasn’t sure.

  ‘That’s all night. We could be waiting that long.’

  ‘No, June knows we’re here. She’ll do something to get us off.’

  The early pleasure they’d had at being on Milo’s boat was gone. They were scared and they were cold and there was nothing else to eat on board. Amy looked at the camping stove and wondered if she could light it to make a cup of tea, but although they were surrounded by swirling muddy river water there wasn’t a drop of water they could drink.

  The sky clouded over and the children left the shore. Amy and Pat huddled together on the narrow berth in the cabin with Milo’s wet weather equipment piled on top of them.

  It was an hour or so before Amy heard Milo hailing them. She shot out on deck to see him sculling towards them in a dinghy.

  ‘You little pests,’ he said when he came alongside. ‘Come on, you first, Amy.’ Keeping the boats as close as he could on the heaving water, he yanked them down one by one.

  ‘It isn’t safe, Amy, for you to come out to my boat without me.’

  ‘You never bring me.’

  ‘Do you blame me? You should have more sense. Stay away from it until you’ve learned about the tides.’ He looked at Pat. ‘You’re another pest. Your mother rang June up ages ago to ask her to send you home. She wanted to take you shopping for new shoes.’ He looked at her bare feet. Amy tried to keep hers out of sight.

  ‘Don’t you two have any shoes?’

  ‘We left them on board,’ Amy muttered. They’d buckled their sandals together to make them easy to carry.

  ‘We aren’t going back for them now,’ Milo said grimly. He told them June had telephoned him at work, that he’d come home early and borrowed a friend’s dinghy to get them off. ‘Why can’t you play at home?’

  ‘We were but Pa made us go out. He said we were making too much noise in the house.’ They’d been playing with the gramophone, another thing Amy wasn’t allowed to do on her own, singing along to it.

  Suddenly in the spring of 1939, conscription came and blotted out all their personal problems. Nobody had expected it to come before the war started and it renewed and heightened all their fears. If there was already conscription, who could doubt that war was coming? It took Milo by surprise. He was in the first batch to be called up, and found himself in Aldershot before he had time to think about it.

  A few months later, with his basic training behind him, he came home on leave for a weekend. In the middle of Sunday lunch, he said he didn’t like all the square-bashing and would have preferred the merchant navy because he knew a lot about boats.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell them?’ Mum asked

  ‘I did,’ he said.

  Pa was cross with him. ‘You never stop to think about anything. Didn’t I tell you they’d start on unmarried men without dependents, and it wouldn’t necessarily be the eighteen-year-olds? With a little forethought, you could have made your choice before conscription came in.’

  That had made Milo furious. ‘I never wanted to work in your stupid business. I wanted to join the merchant navy when I left school and you stopped me.’

  Pa was scathing. ‘I thought I’d mentioned to you that in the event of war the antiques business would not be considered war work and might not even survive.’

  In fact he’d nagged Milo over the last year, but now he held his tardiness up as an example to June because her birthday was just four months away.

  ‘Once you’re eighteen,’ he’d told her, ‘you’ll probably find yourself directed into uncongenial war work.’

  June’s commercial course would finish in July and less had been said recently about her working in the family business.

  ‘If you’ve any sense, June, you’ll make your job choice now in essential work. Building planes or boats, or manufacturing munitions – they all need secretarial workers.’

  Leonie worried about her too but in a different way. Steve had told her several times, ‘You can leave June to me,’ and to a large extent she had. Leonie didn’t doubt for a moment that June was his favourite child, he made it rather too obvious, but June seemed secretive, and though she paid lip service to loving her father as much as h
e did her, she escaped from his company as often as she could. Leonie was afraid June didn’t want much of her company either, and blamed herself for not giving her more attention as she grew up.

  The preparations for war were making Leonie anxious. Gas attacks were expected and gas masks were distributed to all civilians. They were told bombing raids could occur too and public air-raid shelters were being built, but the advice was that householders with space on their own premises should make private arrangements. Every post brought pages of advice about this.

  ‘I’m not going to a public shelter,’ Steve said. ‘We have the cellar here, we’ll use that.’

  ‘Can you get down those steps?’ Leonie asked. ‘They’re quite steep.’

  ‘I’ve never tried,’ he said sharply. ‘Never had reason to until now. But I can’t walk far and goodness knows where the nearest shelter will be.’

  The next day, Leonie went to look at the cellar steps and open the area up. It was years since the cellars had been used. The steps were grimy and made slippery with green algae. Milo would be coming home on another forty-eight-hour pass at the weekend and Leonie decided she’d ask him to help her clean the place up so they could use it.

  There was a row of windows that matched those upstairs, but they were only six feet from a retaining wall holding the soil of the garden in place, and they were so begrimed that very little light penetrated into the rooms. She had to get a torch to explore those away from the windows.

  She could remember the time when the servants running the house had lived down here, and was surprised to find how extensive the cellars were. In a room that had been used as a kitchen, there was a dripping tap over an ancient stone sink. She had to take a hammer to turn it on, but yes, there was running water down here. There was also a laundry room with more sinks and pulleys for drying clothes, an open fireplace in a living room, but there was no electricity. She found candles and oil lamps that she thought might be useful. The servants’ bedrooms were at the front of the house but below ground level, and clearly that would be the safest place to shelter.