Forgotten Dreams
Also by Katie Flynn
A Liverpool Lass
The Girl From Penny Lane
Liverpool Taffy
The Mersey Girls
Strawberry Fields
Rainbow’s End
Rose of Tralee
No Silver Spoon
Polly’s Angel
The Girl from Seaforth Sands
The Liverpool Rose
Poor Little Rich Girl
The Bad Penny
Down Daisy Street
A Kiss and a Promise
Two Penn’orth of Sky
A Long and Lonely Road
The Cuckoo Child
Darkest Before Dawn
Orphans of the Storm
Little Girl Lost
Beyond the Blue Hills
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Epub ISBN: 9781446411100
Version 1.0
Published by William Heinemann 2007
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Copyright © Katie Flynn 2007
Katie Flynn has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
First published in Great Britain in 2007 by
William Heinemann
The Random House Group Limited
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SW1V 2SA
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The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN
9780434017720
Contents
For John Emms, and any other members of the Rhyl Tennis Club who played with us in the sixties; happy days!
My very sincere thanks to John Emms, who starred at the Wellington Pier Theatre in the eighties, and put me right on things which I was no longer able to check for myself since the old theatre has been demolished. However, he floored me by assuring me that the theatre did not have a green room; the cast congregated in the bar. But this did not suit my story because of under-age performers, so I’m afraid I invented a green room. Thanks again, John.
Chapter One1921
It was a hot afternoon in August and Lottie Lacey was sitting on the top step of No. 2 Victoria Court staring unseeingly ahead of her whilst her tongue checked her small pearly teeth, as it had done so often this past week. Of course the result was always the same: she had a wobbler. Several of her friends had already lost some baby teeth, which was not unusual at seven years old, but they could regard such a loss with equanimity. Some even put the tooth under their pillow and next day found it gone and a round brown penny in its place. But even if their parents could not afford to hand out pennies whenever a tooth came out, there would be no dire consequences for the tooth losers.
Lottie, however, knew her own case to be very different, for her mother had impressed upon her the importance of looking ‘sweet’. It was one of the first prerequisites for a child star – a subject on which Mammy had been very bitter recently, for while Lottie had been in hospital she had been forced to employ another little girl to appear nightly in the current production at the Gaiety theatre just off the Scotland Road. But Merle sang flat and could not be persuaded to mime her songs, so she had been told to go. Consequently, Mammy had had to do a solo act until Lottie had been well enough to perform once more.
Sweetness, however, was not merely a matter of small pearly teeth; it encompassed hair as well. Lottie’s hair was brown and straight but her mammy had decided that it simply would not do. ‘You see, queen, when you’re part of a double act – a mother and daughter act like you and me – then it’s best to look alike,’ she had said, giving her appealing smile and twisting a strand of Lottie’s hair into a ringlet. ‘So this very evening I’ll lighten your hair up a bit. It won’t take more than an hour and I’ll buy a comic paper so that you’ve got something to read while the peroxide works.’ She had smiled lovingly at her daughter. ‘Then you’ll be as fair as me and the audience won’t ever know that we aren’t both true blondes.’
That had been when Lottie was only six, but even at six she had been well aware that Mammy was no more a true blonde than herself. She had not been tempted to comment, however, for Mammy could be reduced to tears – or temper – when unpalatable facts were pointed out. So Lottie had submitted to a long evening of boredom and discomfort whilst her mother covered her hair in a thick white paste, then rinsed and shampooed, and finally rubbed her head briskly before settling her on the hearthrug before the fire to dry out. Later, Lottie had looked in the mirror and had been shocked to find her hair not merely lighter but as yellow as her mother’s. She had hated it at first, but soon grew accustomed though it was a nuisance having to have her roots done every few weeks. ‘Stage lighting is strong and it wouldn’t do for you to come on half brown and half blonde,’ her mother had explained. ‘But like most theatricals I am a perfectionist, so even though it’s a bother I shall make sure you always look your best, as I do myself.’
Cautiously, now, Lottie’s tongue probed the wobbly tooth. She wondered whether it would be possible to glue it into place, perhaps with chewing gum, then remembered Baz O’Mara telling her that first teeth did not so much fall out as get pushed. ‘It’s your grown-up teeth wantin’ a place in the front row and pushin’ your baby teeth out o’ the way, you little idiot,’ he had said crossly. ‘You can’t stop it. All you can do is hope your new teeth will come through small. But I expect they’ll be huge, like horses’, and then, when you don’t look sweet any more, your mam’ll kick you out, same as she did with Merle, and it’ll serve you bleedin’ well right.’
Lottie took most of Baz’s remarks with a liberal pinch of salt because she knew Baz and Merle had been great pals and he had bitterly resented her dismissal, but this time Baz’s remark had scared her a bit. After all, he was ten, three whole years older than herself, and had been connected with the theatre all his life; and though he made no secret of the contempt he felt for Lottie at least he often answered her questions, which was more than her mother did. She knew her mother would never really turn her out, but she guessed that she might be relegated to being merely a daughter, which was nothing compared to being a performer.
Lottie herself had also been connected with the theatre all her life, of course, but ever since the accident her memories of the years before it happened had been vague and muddled. When Lottie had come round to find herself in a hospital ward, she had not recognised her own mammy – imagine that! She could still remember the trembling terror of finding herself lying in a narrow white bed whilst a beautiful blonde lady clutched her hands and wept and begged her not to die, not to leave her mammy, whose fault it was . . .
Apparently, Mammy had blamed herself for the accident because she had decided to leave Rhyl, where she had worked at the Pavilion theatre, and return to Liverpool, the city where Lottie had been born six years earlier. Mammy had explained that Lottie had been so excited at the thought of seeing the birthplace they had left while she was still a baby that she had dashed ahead, straight into the roadway, where she had been knocked down by a passing lorry. She had suffered from something called concussion and had been unconscious for three whole weeks and in hospital for more than three months, for she had broken both her legs and such fractures take a considerable time to heal. When she had come to herself, she could remember nothing, not her own name, not her mammy, nor anything that had happened over the past six years. It had been a bit as though she had been born in that hospital bed, and although a whole year had passed since then, her memories of the time before the accident were fuzzy and unreal. If she tried to make sense of them the headaches came back and this was bad for her: the doctors at the hospital had said so. Her favourite doctor had also said not to worry about the memory loss. ‘You may wake up one day remembering every tiny detail of your past life, or it may come to you in dribs and drabs,’ he had said. ‘But don’t try to force it; let it happen naturally, if you can.’
As her mother had pointed out, however, this had not been possible. The dance routines and songs which Lottie had been performing over the past year had gone along with everything else, and had to be relearned as quickly as possible, and in the process Mammy had let slip a great many details about their past life together. Lottie had fastened on to these eagerly.
If they had returned to Rhyl, of course, she might have remembered a great many things for herself, but in Rhyl her mother had been assistant to a conjurer with whom she had fallen out, which was why she had left the Pavilion theatre and come to Liverpool to work with Baz’s father. Mr O’Mara was also a conjurer, though he preferred to be known a magician, and Mammy, whose stage name was Louella, handed ‘Mr Magic’ his equipment, climbed into the disappearing cabinet and disappeared, and, as a finale, was sawn in half to reappear, two minutes later, miraculously unhurt. In their mother and daughter routine, Louella and Lottie tap-danced to popular tunes and sang a few songs, and then Mammy did cartwheels and flick-flacks all round the stage whilst Lottie, in a frilly pink tutu and pink satin ballet shoes, stood on her points, pirouetted with her arms over her head, and smiled sweetly at the audience to encourage their applause.
It had been suggested by one doctor that mother and daughter might return to Rhyl, just for a few days, in order to aid Lottie’s memory, but Louella had been horrified by the idea. It seemed that her former partner had been violent and had bitterly resented Louella’s abandoning him, even though she had stayed until the end of the holiday season. ‘He’d likely kill the pair of us if we went back,’ she had told anyone who suggested a return to Rhyl and Lottie was glad, for she dreaded the thought of facing more strangers, particularly one who disliked both herself and her mother.
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