Megan of Merseyside (16 page)

Megan wasted no time in letting her father know how things stood.

‘Why don’t we look for a place to rent in Wallasey and then tell Mam?’ she suggested.

‘You mean take her to see it after we’ve decided what we want and save all the arguments.’ He laughed.

‘Something like that.’ Megan smiled.

‘You’re on!’ agreed her father. ‘We’ll ask Robert to help.’

‘Must we?’ Megan said with a frown. She felt apprehensive because she had no wish to encourage his interest in their affairs.

‘Robert has lived in New Brighton all his life, remember, so he’ll know the most suitable areas for us to start looking,’ persisted her father.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ Megan admitted reluctantly. ‘As long as we make sure that we don’t rent a house too close to where he lives,’ she warned.

Chapter Sixteen

THE WILLIAMS FAMILY
move to Wallasey was a tremendous success. From the first moment she saw the house to rent in Belgrave Street, Kathy was won over to the idea. They would be living close to Central Park and yet within easy walking distance of Liscard shopping centre. Belgrave Street was on a bus route so she could be walking along the promenade at New Brighton, or shopping in Liverpool’s Church Street, within half an hour.

The semi-detached house had been newly decorated throughout so they were able to move in without any delay. For Watkin, having a garden again was almost like turning the clock back to Beddgelert days.

Lynn seemed to enjoy the adventure of travelling by tram and boat to Liverpool. ‘It’s great being able to walk around on the top deck and get a good blow,’ she enthused. ‘You meet all sorts of interesting fellas,’ she added with a broad grin.

Megan was delighted that the move had gone so smoothly. She knew they had Robert to thank. He had checked out a great many houses on their behalf until he had found something suitable.

She’d felt guilty about turning down so many of them, but she considered them to be much too near to where he lived. She didn’t want to find
herself
bumping into him every time she went shopping or out for a walk.

Megan knew it amused Lynn the way she avoided Robert whenever he called, but she was determined not to become too friendly with him. It was difficult. He was always suggesting somewhere he wanted to take her and she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

‘Why don’t you go, Megan,’ Lynn teased. ‘He won’t try anything on, he’s much too respectable. You could have him eating out of your hand if you wanted. I wish he’d ask me out, I’d go like a shot.’

‘Don’t talk rubbish! Do you know how old he is?’

‘He’s thirty. That’s not old! I like older men, they have more style.’ She sighed dramatically. ‘I sometimes wish Flash was older and thinking of settling down.’

‘Stop being silly, Lynn. You’ve only just left school so there’s no question of you getting married for years.’

‘I’d get married tomorrow if the right fella asked me,’ Lynn told her.

‘Why do you want to throw away your life like that? If you’d had any sense you would have stayed on at school and passed some exams and got a decent job …’

Lynn wasn’t listening. She was scanning the pages of the
Liverpool Echo
, and her face was wreathed in smiles when she looked up.

‘Listen to this,’ she exclaimed excitedly. ‘The King Oliver’s Jazz Band are going to be on at the Tower Ballroom.’

‘So what is so marvellous about that?’

‘You know nothing, our Megan, do you?’ retorted Lynn scathingly. ‘They’re the tops and they play all the new dances like the Shimmy and the Charleston. How about us going to the Tower on Friday night?’

‘No thanks! It will probably get very rough. Remember the night when we went to the Stork …’

‘You’re always bringing that up,’ grumbled Lynn. ‘Oh, come on, Meg. This is happening right here on our doorstep. I’m not asking you to go over to Liverpool. Please! Just this once. Mam’s bound to create if I say I’m going on my own because it doesn’t finish until midnight.’

Lynn could be persuasive when she chose and eventually Megan gave in. A night out would be something to look forward to. Although her job was going well there hadn’t been much excitement in her life since Miles went away on his course.

Not seeing him, or even hearing from him, although she understood from the office grapevine that he had been home on a number of weekends, only intensified her feelings. In bed at night, she agonised over her memories, wondering if things would have been different between them if only she had given in to his demands.

Her face flamed as she remembered an evening before Valerie Pearce’s wedding when, instead of taking her to the pictures, Miles had driven to a secluded part of Leasowe foreshore. Snuggled up under a plaid car rug, they’d kissed and caressed,
exchanging
whispered endearments, lost in a heaven of their own making.

He’d grumbled when she adamantly refused his ultimate caress and pulled away from him, rearranging her clothes, her face burning, her passion quelled as though she had been doused in cold water.

Angrily, he had struggled into his jacket, searching in the pocket for the car keys. Wheels spinning, he had zoomed out onto the main road. When they had parted he had not even said goodnight. And, although her throat had ached with bottled-up tears, Megan had refused to let him see how desperately hurt and unhappy she was.

At the time she’d felt she was right to refuse him. Now, after weeks and weeks of silent separation, she wasn’t sure. Perhaps Lynn was right and she was fuddy-duddy in her outlook. Miles had certainly seemed to think so. A night out with Lynn and her friends might help to put the incident in its right perspective, she thought wryly.

Lynn was right. It was a gala occasion. New Brighton was packed. Extra ferry boats had been organised to bring the hundreds of fans over from Liverpool.

‘Why don’t you leave your car in Robert’s drive?’ Lynn suggested. ‘It would be much safer there.’

‘That would be an open invitation for him to come along with us,’ Megan replied with a grimace as she parked in a side road.

‘It might be a chance for him to let his hair down. You might learn to like him if he wasn’t quite so stuffy,’ teased Lynn mischievously.

‘Don’t start,’ warned Megan. ‘I want to enjoy myself tonight.’

‘Does that mean you are going to come backstage with me at the interval?’ Lynn asked, raising her carefully pencilled brows.

Megan hesitated for a fraction before agreeing. ‘Of course. That’s what is going to make the evening special, isn’t it,’ she said lightly. ‘Maybe I’ll meet this Flash character you are always going on about.’

Lynn pulled a face. ‘Flash won’t be there, worse luck. He’s working away and only gets home every other weekend.’

‘They’re a great crowd, aren’t they,’ Lynn commented triumphantly on the way home.

‘Playing the same tunes night after night seems an odd way to earn a living,’ opined Megan.

‘What an existence, though! It seems they never know where they’ll be appearing next. London, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, you name it and they’ve played there.’

‘Someone said they’re planning to make some more records.’

‘I told you, they’re a winning band. Sometimes the whole group are in the Copper Kettle, huddled in a corner, plotting and planning their next tour. That’s when they’re not getting high!’

‘High?’

‘Oh, Megan, you are dumb!’ Lynn rolled her eyes in feigned despair.

‘You mean they’re using drugs!’

‘Well,’ Lynn pulled a face, ‘I suppose you could
say
that, but only in a mild way. Flash says they could get equally pepped up on champagne.’

‘Flash seems to know an awful lot about it,’ Megan said suspiciously. ‘Is he into drugs?’

Lynn shrugged. ‘Possibly,’ she said evasively.

‘I hope you’re not indulging!’

The alarm in Megan’s tone brought a flush of anger to Lynn’s cheeks.

‘Of course I’m not! Do you think I’m daft?’ she exploded.

‘Well, you seem to know a lot about it,’ argued Megan stubbornly.

‘I told you, they all come into the Copper Kettle and talk about these things.’

‘It’s a good thing you didn’t tell me all this before we went to The Tower,’ Megan said crossly. ‘If you had, then I certainly wouldn’t have gone with you.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Megan, stop being such a back number.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, listen to you. You sound about ninety. We’re living in the 1920s, everything’s changing! You’ve got to move with the times. Drugs are part of it!’

‘So you
are
dabbling in drugs,’ censured Megan.

‘I never said so …’

‘Then why are you acting so guilty?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ retorted Lynn huffily, turning away and staring out of the window into the darkness.

‘Oh, yes you do. There’s something going on,’ persisted Megan.

Lynn refused to reply. As they turned into Belgrave Street and pulled into their own driveway Lynn made to get out of the car but Megan stopped her.

‘You’re not … not sleeping with Flash, are you?’ she asked worriedly.

‘What’s it to do with you if I am?’ Lynn retorted with a toss of her head.

‘Oh, Lynn … Are you letting him …’ Megan’s voice trailed away as she stared in horror at her sister. ‘Oh, Lynn, you’ve not long left school …’

‘What difference does that make? We know what we’re doing, I’m not going to get pregnant or anything stupid like that!’

‘How can you be sure? Fancy trusting him.’ Megan stared at her younger sister in dismay. ‘Oh Lynn! Whatever would Mam say if she knew!’

‘Who is going to tell her, or Dad? No one knows except you!’

Long after she was in bed that night, Megan lay staring into the darkness, wondering if Lynn really was telling the truth or simply boasting. She found it hard to believe that she would take such a momentous step.

The thought troubled Megan even while she slept. She awoke late, feeling cross and disgruntled and decidedly out of sorts.

‘What’s got into you, girl?’ Kathy asked in surprise when Megan complained that the tea was too strong and the toast not browned enough. ‘Not like you to find fault!’

‘Nothing’s the matter with me.’

‘I’d say that late nights don’t agree with you,’
her
mother told her. ‘Our Lynn’s chirpy enough, though. What’s happened, have you fallen out with your boyfriend?’

‘Our Meg hasn’t got a boyfriend.’ Lynn sniggered. ‘She’s too prim and proper for that sort of thing,’ she added meaningfully.

Aware that her mother was watching her closely, Megan pushed aside her unfinished breakfast and went back up to her room before deciding to go out. A brisk walk to clear her head was what she needed.

Chapter Seventeen

1927 WAS THE
worst winter for over a hundred years. From January until mid-March everyone shivered; even the English Channel froze over in places. Snow and ice piled up from one end of Britain to the other. As fast as the roads were cleared, fresh falls of snow created further chaos. The death from cold of many elderly people made headline news.

The roads were so dangerous, with frozen sludge and black ice, that Megan was afraid to drive her car, so she crossed to Liverpool on the ferry each morning. Only the hardy few still took their constitutional on the top deck. The rest, Megan and Lynn among them, huddled inside the lower deck saloon, grateful for the shelter and even prepared to put up with an atmosphere that was blue and choking with tobacco smoke.

‘We’d be worse off if we were still living in Beddgelert,’ Lynn reminded her.

‘It’s said in the newspaper that most of Wales is cut off completely.’

‘It’s a different kind of cold there.’ Megan shivered, pulling her woollen scarf higher under her chin. ‘This wind is raw and damp because it’s coming straight off the Mersey.’

‘Yeah.’ Lynn shuddered, ‘They were saying
yesterday
in the Copper Kettle that it was so cold that a lorry load of beer that was being delivered to a pub in Whitechapel exploded in its bottles!’

For those working at the docks, it was sheer hell trying to handle crates and cargo that were slippery with ice. Freezing winds buffeted the men unrelentingly as they worked on the quayside. Their hands were cut and sore, their faces chapped and raw.

Driving was hazardous. Each time her father and Robert Field set out Megan was on tenterhooks until she knew they were safe. They had been stranded so many times that her mother was rapidly becoming a nervous wreck with the worry of it all.

It seemed spring would never arrive. In mid-March, fresh falls of snow and bad weather brought further appalling road conditions. Yet again unable to use her car, Megan travelled to Liverpool by ferry. Buffeted by icy winds as she struggled up the floating roadway after a rough crossing she sometimes wished they had never moved across to Wallasey.

It had all been pointless anyway, she thought morosely. Her hopes that, once they were living in a nice house in respectable surroundings, Miles would openly acknowledge their friendship hadn’t materialised.

Sometimes she found the strain almost unbearable. He hadn’t been near the office, or contacted her at all, since he’d been away on his course. Yet she knew he had often come home for the weekend because she had heard Mr Walker mention the fact when he’d been talking on the phone.

She kept meaning to ask him how Miles was, but at the last minute her courage always failed her. She became so quiet and withdrawn that even Mr Walker noticed.

‘Are you worrying about your father driving in this atrocious weather, Megan?’ he asked one day at the end of a dictating session. ‘You seem to be extremely preoccupied lately.’ He frowned.

She looked at him, startled. ‘I’m sorry. Have I overlooked something?’

‘No, everything is fine, Megan. I am more than pleased with your work, but you do seem to be rather tense.’

‘I’m all right, thank you.’

She wondered what his reaction would be if she told him that she was frantic for news of Miles. Would he understand and tell her what she longed to hear, or would he be taken aback by her audacity?