The Seven Streets of Liverpool (23 page)

Phyllis and Doria were dancing in Trafalgar Square. It wasn’t an official dance; there wasn’t an orchestra, just three buskers – two with harmonicas and one with a banjo. The girls had been on their way to the Paramount Dance Hall in Tottenham Court Road on a brightly moonlit night, but had been distracted by the buskers and the couples – the men were American soldiers – who were jitterbugging like mad. It was the sort of occasion when women didn’t mind dancing with each other, and Doria and Phyllis were trying to jitterbug but making quite a hash of it, Phyllis in particular because she was in uniform, whereas Doria was wearing something frilly and high-heeled shoes.

Suddenly Doria was whisked away by a dashing young American and Phyllis was left on her own. She didn’t mind; she just backed into the watching crowds and, as so often happened, wondered what Mum and Dad were doing at this very minute in Beverley.

‘You don’t want to dance, do you?’ said a voice.

Phyllis turned. A young man in civvies was standing beside her. He was quite clear in the moonlight and looked very young, eighteen or nineteen at the most. He had a lovely cheerful face, a half-grown moustache, and wore a pair of thick-rimmed spectacles. ‘That’s a strange thing to ask,’ she said. ‘I suppose you’ll ask next if I don’t want anything to eat. Do you always ask negative questions?’

He didn’t look at all disconcerted. ‘Not usually,’ he said. ‘It’s just that when I saw that that American had taken over your friend, I felt I had to talk to you but thought you would prefer to dance, and I’m afraid I can’t dance a step.’

‘I’m not very good at it either.’

He grasped her elbow and they moved further back into the crowd. ‘Would you like a coffee? There’s a Lyons not far away. My name’s Martin Winters, by the way.’

‘I’m Phyllis Taylor.’ She would have loved a coffee with Martin Winters, but … ‘I’m sorry.’ she said. ‘I must wait for my friend. I can’t possibly desert her.’

‘I understand, but would it be possible for you to desert her at some time in the foreseeable future, like tomorrow, for instance, and we could go for a coffee then?’

Well, it
should
be possible, Phyllis thought. She and Doria weren’t Siamese twins. They didn’t
have
to go out together every single night. The American Doria was dancing with might ask her out and this time Phyllis would say she didn’t want to tag along like a gooseberry, or have the American bring along one of his pals for her – a blind date, it was called.

‘I could go for a coffee tomorrow,’ she told Martin Winters.

He raised his eyebrows and they disappeared behind the frame of his glasses. ‘Half past seven in Lyons?’ he suggested.

She said that would be fine, whereupon he smiled and demanded she tell him her entire life story in no more than a hundred words.

Phyllis laughed and said she wasn’t prepared to try, but would tell him in as many words as it took. She briefly described her upbringing in Beverley, adding that her mother was a nurse and her father a naval architect, but omitting the nonsense he’d got up to in Bootle. She told him what it was like living there and how much she’d loved it, then about joining the army as soon as she turned eighteen.

‘That was two months ago,’ she finished. ‘Now, what about you?’

‘Aged twenty-three,’ he said crisply. ‘Born in Coventry, no brothers and sisters, went to university, took French history. Wanted to fight for my country but turned down by army, navy and air force because my sight’s not up to scratch. Work now as reporter for the
Daily Recorder
; due there at ten o’clock, in fact – I’m on the night shift. Oh, and my dad was killed in an air raid. Me and Mum miss him very much.’

‘You poor thing,’ Phyllis cried. Holding her elbow had somehow turned into holding her hand. ‘I’m so sorry.’

‘So’s me and Mum,’ he said with a heartfelt sigh.

‘I’m an only child too,’ she told him.

‘It’s quite nice sometimes, but not all the time,’ he remarked, giving her hand a squeeze.

‘And I’ve always been interested in French history. All those pompous kings and their mistresses – Madame de Pompadour …’

‘And Madame du Barry. And the Revolution; I mean, that was a revolution and a half. They really went to town with the guillotine.’ He shuddered.

‘And Napoleon. I admired him, but I know I shouldn’t because he wasn’t really a very nice person.’

‘Nor was Josephine,’ Martin said with a grin. ‘Do you know, since university, you’re the first person I’ve ever talked to like this.’

He squeezed her hand again and she squeezed his back. They looked at each other and Phyllis knew that something truly remarkable had happened that night. It was a bit scary in a way and she was frightened to put it into words or even think about it too hard.

‘I just knew, when I saw you,’ Martin stammered. ‘I just knew …’ His voice faded and he pulled Phyllis close and kissed her on the forehead. ‘I just knew something.’

‘
There
you are!’ Doria was standing in front of her. ‘We’re going to a proper dance. This is Henry.’ Henry was behind her, leaning his chin on the top of her head. ‘Henry, this is my friend Phyllis.’ She ignored Phyllis’s companion.

‘Hi, Phyllis,’ Henry drawled.

He sounded very drunk. If it hadn’t been for that, Phyllis would have told Doria that she would rather have a coffee with Martin Winters than go dancing. But it seemed irresponsible to allow her friend to go off with a drunken American. Lord knows what might happen.

Anyway, Doria had just taken it for granted that Phyllis would come, and was in the process of dragging her away, still not having noticed the young man she was with.

Phyllis turned, ‘Cheerio,’ she called.

‘See you tomorrow,’ Martin called back.

The American grabbed Phyllis by the hand; he already had hold of Doria, who squealed as he pulled them both to the other side of Trafalgar Square, where the sound of drums drowned out the harmonicas and the banjo. He was whooping like a cowboy and Phyllis was annoyed that she had given up coffee with Martin for this! It dawned upon her that she had let Doria take over her life to the extent that she was no longer Phyllis Taylor but a slave who hadn’t any will left of her own. It had to stop, and it would stop later tonight when they got back to barracks. She would tell Doria that she had had enough.

They stumbled up some steps, both girls by now attempting to free themselves, but the American’s grip was like iron. At the top of the steps he seemed to think they were still in Trafalgar Square, and pulled them into the middle of what was in fact a very busy street full of fast-moving traffic. He seemed unaware of the double-decker bus that was bearing down on them. It knocked him down first, then the girls, who were one on each side of him and just a tiny bit behind.

Eileen received the official-looking letter from the army a few days later. It turned out that Doria had given her name as next of kin to be advised if anything unfortunate took place.

The letter told her that Miss Doria Caroline Mallory had died in a road accident in London and that her body was in a hospital close to where she had been killed. Did Mrs Stephens wish the army to go ahead with a funeral, or would her family sooner make the arrangements?

Eileen picked up Doria’s baby and shed tears into his white knitted shawl. Theo woke up and gave her a lovely smile. He had got over his bad humour and smiled a lot these days. Sometimes life could be dead cruel, she thought sadly. Although Doria had got on her nerves, she had put up with having Nick’s baby and his cruel desertion with remarkable good humour.

After a while, she telephoned Peter and gave him the bad news. ‘You can come and see Theo whenever you want,’ she added. In fact, she would sooner never see Peter Mallory again, but Theo was the first, possibly the only nephew he would ever have.

He was understandably upset by the news and said he would leave work immediately and go home and tell his parents.

Eileen hoped the Mallorys wouldn’t decide that they wanted Theo in place of their daughter. They were, after all, blood relatives and had far more right to him than she did.

‘I hope not,’ she told the baby she had begun to think of as her own.

In Pearl Street, in the flat over the dairy, Lena Newton received a letter from Phyllis Taylor’s mother, Winifred.

My daughter made so many friends when we lived in Bootle, and I think you were the closest. I am so sad to tell you that last week Phyllis died in a road accident in London. My husband and I are broken-hearted at the thought that we shall never see our bright, lovely daughter again. I hope you will think of her on Friday, the day of her cremation. Phyllis was a very modern young woman and had expressed a wish to be cremated when she died, something that I had never, ever imagined happening in my or my husband’s lifetime.

In all the time Lena had worked at the company in Hope Street, she had never taken a single day off, but after reading the letter, she decided to give work a miss that day and go and see Eileen Stephens. More than anyone, Eileen would understand just how distraught she felt that the God she had always worshipped should allow Phyllis to die so casually.

‘I’m so useless,’ she wailed a few hours later in the living room of the cottage in Melling. Nicky watched from the table, where he was colouring in a book, clearing wondering what was wrong. ‘I do nothing to make the world a better place. But Phyllis, she was so full of life. I just know she would have made a real impact on the world in one way or another. It’s so very unfair. If only I had died and Phyllis had lived.’

‘Oh, Lena!’ Eileen sat beside the woman on the settee and stroked her hair. It was terrible that such a nice person should think so little of herself. ‘Lena, you aren’t useless. What an awful thing to say. Like so many people, you have done your bit towards the war. You should feel proud of yourself. And I’m sure God isn’t sitting up in heaven choosing the people he wants to die. I mean, so many people have died since this awful war began; hundreds, thousands, even millions if it’s true about these concentration camps that Hitler has established.’ Jews were the prime victims of the camps, along with Gypsies, the handicapped, and socialists like her dad.

She was really saddened to hear about Phyllis. She assumed that she and Doria had died in the same accident, so it was a double blow: two young women with lives yet to live. So far, she was the only person who knew about Doria, and it seemed wise to tell Lena now, rather than having someone like Sheila or Brenda come out with it once they knew and upsetting her all over again.

Lena rocked silently back and forth when told about the other girl’s death; she was already so distressed, it seemed almost too much for her to bear.

‘Why not stay the weekend with me?’ Eileen proposed. ‘I did invite you months ago, but Doria turned up. After she went to join the army, I truly forgot to ask you again.’

Martin Winters had gone to the Lyons restaurant in Charing Cross Road expecting to meet Phyllis, the girl he knew he would marry one day. If she felt the same as he did, she would already be aware that they were made for each other.

He arrived early, half expecting her to be early too, but instead she was late, very late. In fact, she didn’t come at all, much to his shock and dismay. It meant that the plans he had made over the last twenty-four hours for his future with Phyllis Taylor had been knocked off course before they could begin.

But of course, she was in the army. It could be that an emergency had arisen in another part of the world and she’d been posted abroad along with her friend. He clung on to that idea all night while on duty with the newspaper. Next day, he caught a bus to Islington, identified the whereabouts of the Army Training Centre and almost ran there.

There weren’t any guards in sentry boxes outside, as he had expected; just a small building at the entrance with a young soldier sitting inside to identify visitors.

Martin explained why he was there, though he elaborated rather, thinking that to merely say he’d been let down on a date wasn’t sufficient reason for him to be given the information he wanted.

‘I promised,’ he said fervently to the fresh-faced private, ‘really promised that I would go and see her sick mother in Beverley – that’s in Yorkshire – this weekend. My job’s taking me up that way, but I lost the mother’s address.’ He managed to include a note of real anguish in his voice.

‘I’ll see what I can do, mate.’ The soldier picked up the phone and dialled a number. If it turned out that Phyllis had merely not wanted anything to do with him, thought Martin, then it would be a terrible blow.

After a long conversation that seemed to get quieter and quieter until Martin could scarcely hear a word, the soldier put the receiver back in its cradle and turned to face him. His expression was grave.

‘Sorry, mate, but I’m afraid there’s been an accident. Private Phyllis Taylor is dead.’

Chapter 19

It had been a wearing weekend, what with discovering that both Doria and Phyllis were dead and dealing with Lena Newton’s distress. Eileen hoped it wasn’t selfish, hard-hearted even, to be pleased when Monday came and she could attempt to think of something else. Lena had returned to Bootle, and apart from two small children and a cat, she had the house to herself. It was a crisp, sunny day with a strong breeze and not all that cold for late October.

In times gone by when she had felt stressed, she had immersed herself in a baking spree, turning out trays of jam tarts, fairy cakes, scones, and possibly a sponge cake, which Tony would help her to decorate. Most of it was presented to her family and friends in Pearl Street. But with rationing, these days such an extravagance was out of the question. Instead, she indulged herself in doing the laundry, in the boiler and by hand, the only expense being a small amount of Persil soap powder. She washed everything: clothes, bedding, any bits and pieces she could get her hands on; even things that weren’t faintly dirty, merely in need of ironing.

Although washing helped to take her mind off her worries, the thing that helped most was hanging it out on the line and watching it blow in the wind. If there was a good gust, the sheets would become almost horizontal, collapsing limply until the breeze got its strength back and they took off again. Nicky enjoyed it too. They sat at the bottom of the garden on the bench that she thought of as her dad’s, and he clapped and cheered when the washing almost became airborne and her stockings wound themselves round and round the line. Theo sat on her knee, warmly wrapped up, as much entertained by the acrobatic washing as she and Nicky were, while Napoleon regarded it as a challenge, as if he was wondering how he could possibly get his claws into a garment and swing on it.

She was wishing there was someone there who could take their photograph – the woman, the little boy, the baby and the cat, something to keep for ever as a reminder of a strange day at a strange time – when a man came in through the wooden gate at the side of the house. He wore a matching jacket and trousers made of rough brown material. She knew straight away what he was – an Italian prisoner of war. There was a camp somewhere in Kirkby and the prisoners were being dispatched about the countryside to help their captors with their farms and gardens.

Eileen got to her feet. ‘Stay there,’ she ordered Nicky before she went towards the man, Theo in her arms, with a slight feeling of trepidation. The next house was quite some distance away.

‘Good morning.’ He bowed slightly from the waist. ‘Would you like me to tidy your garden?’

‘No thank you,’ she said nicely. ‘Me dad keeps it tidy for me.’

The man glanced around the garden, frowning, and she realised that it looked a mess. It was a good month since Jack had set foot in it; the grass needed cutting, the vegetable patch was full of weeds and there were autumn leaves everywhere that required brushing up. She should really have kept an eye on it herself.

‘Do you live here alone?’ the man enquired.

‘No, me husband will be home around five o’clock.’ The man frowned at the line of washing, just as he had frowned at the messy garden. It didn’t contain a single item of men’s clothing. He had no doubt guessed that she was lying.

‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like me to do the garden for you?’ He was smiling at her pleasantly. Nicky had arrived and took hold of his mother’s hand.

‘Oh, all right. You can if you like.’ Lord knew when Dad would come again.

It was only then that the penny dropped and she realised he’d been speaking to her in English when he was supposed to be Italian. ‘You speak English,’ she said, which was an awfully stupid remark.

‘I am an actor,’ he said. ‘My company toured European theatres with our plays. I joined the army as an interpreter.’

‘That’s handy.’ Another stupid remark. ‘The things are in the shed.’ She pointed to the building that her father and Peter Mallory had rebuilt the previous year.

He bowed again. ‘Then I will begin,’ he said stiffly.

‘When you’ve finished, I’ll make you a cup of tea.’ Clutching Nicky and Theo, she fled into the house, locked the kitchen door and watched through the lace curtain, aware for the first time of just how attractive the man was – quite literally tall, dark and handsome, not all that surprising when he was an actor and an Italian.

He pulled the lawnmower out of the shed, removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves and began to cut the grass. She wondered what Dad’s reaction would be when she told him that an Italian prisoner of war, one of the enemy, had actually touched his precious garden.

She would tell him that it was his own fault. There was nothing wrong with their father according to Sheila, who said he just walked about with a gloating look on his face. ‘Though what he’s got to gloat about, I’ve no idea.’

Well, something had been keeping him busy over the last few weeks, thought Eileen, and it wasn’t her garden.

She watched until the lawn was finished. It was always fascinating to see the stripes appear, some so very much darker than others, yet all the same grass. It became less interesting when the man began to weed, though she held Nicky up to see when the leaves were brushed into a heap beside the shed. They wouldn’t stay still and flew all over the place because of the wind. She made herself go outside and tell the man that there was a compost heap at the bottom of the garden where her father usually put them.

‘There’s a wheelbarrow in the shed,’ she informed him. He bowed again and thanked her. Then she hurried back inside and telephoned Cicily Dean, to tell her there was an Italian prisoner of war at work in her garden.

‘I just wanted someone to know that he’s here,’ she said. ‘In case anything happens.’

‘If something happens, then it’ll be too late to do anything about it,’ Cicily pointed out. ‘Would you like it if I came round?’

‘No, it’s all right. I just feel better having told someone.’

‘I understand they’re very polite and helpful.’

‘Well this one seems to be.’

Eileen rang off and looked through the window again. The garden had never looked so tidy. The man was in the throes of rolling down his sleeves and putting on his jacket. He glanced at the window, and either saw her watching through the lace curtain or just assumed that she was, because he raised his hand in a gesture of farewell and looked as if he was about to leave.

Eileen opened the door. ‘I promised you a cup of tea,’ she said. She had almost let him go, relieved at the idea of seeing the back of him, but that would have been unfair and a little bit cowardly. ‘The garden looks lovely. Thank you very much.’ She stood back to let him in. ‘Sit down,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Vincenzo Conti.’

‘I’m Eileen Stephens, this is Nicky, and the baby is called Theo.’

Nicky was seated at the kitchen table, and Theo was propped up in his pram in the corner of the room. The kettle was already boiling.

‘I suppose you must have a lovely garden at home,’ she said, with false brightness as well as a false smile. Close up, he was just as attractive – and it was a nice face as well as handsome. If she had been single, she would have been even more impressed.

‘I do, yes, but I never touch it. We have a gardener.’ He was hunched over the table and gave no sign of smiling back.

‘If that’s the case, you’ve done very well for a non-gardener.’

‘Thank you.’ There was a touch of sarcasm in his voice.

It irritated Eileen. Having made the tea, she put a cup in front of him. ‘Do you take sugar?’

‘No thank you.’

‘Would you like a sarnie – a sandwich?’

‘No, but thank you very much for offering.’

‘That’s all right.’

He straightened up in the chair, as if he was pulling himself together. ‘I’m sorry. You are the first person who has been polite to me, and I am being very rude.’

‘But you’re the enemy,’ she pointed out. ‘Some people are bound to be impolite. They might have lost relatives in the war, or had their homes ruined by a bomb. In fact, I’m not sure why I’m being polite meself.’

‘Did you have relatives killed?’

‘Yes, I lost me husband and me little boy.’ She felt a rush of tears when she thought about Tony.

‘I have never killed anybody,’ he said quietly.

‘Well, somebody killed my son, and the bomb wasn’t made in England. It was just dropped here.’ She felt like asking him to leave. How dare he come into her home and argue the rights and wrongs of war? Well, sort of.

He stood, the tea hardly touched. ‘I’m sorry. There is every reason for you to hate me. It’s just that …’ For a minute, he looked quite desolate. ‘When I came into your garden and saw you, it was such a delightful picture: a mother with her two sons, and a cat, and the washing blowing on the line. A picture showing a perfectly happy family. Yet I expected you to shout at me to go away, even hit me as some people have done. It made me realise that I no longer belong to the normal world. It’s as if I have caught a plague, become untouchable.’

Eileen ordered him to sit down again and he meekly complied. ‘Drink your tea,’ she said sternly. ‘In a little while, I’ll make you a sarnie. It’s only natural that people will shout at you. You can’t expect kisses when you don’t deserve them.’ And the perfectly happy family was a lie. There should have been two little boys and a baby; the baby’s mother was dead, and she had no idea what had happened to the father of the children who were still alive.

Any day now, thought Jack, Jess would tell him not to come any more because she was pregnant, or because it was too late for her to become pregnant without that Yank of hers guessing she’d been having it off with someone else.

And if the truth be known, Jack was becoming exhausted, and just a trifle bored. He was beginning to miss arguing with his mates, holding up the bar in the King’s Arms. He’d been too tired to go to the footie the last two Saturdays.

One evening towards the end of October, he arrived at her house at seven, the usual time. In the past at this time of year there’d be kids coming round asking for a penny for the guy, but that hadn’t happened since the war began. The guy had to go on top of a bonfire, and kids today probably had no idea what a bonfire was.

He went in the back way. To his surprise, Jess was sitting in front of the fire with a sleeping Penny on her knee.

‘Don’t come near,’ she warned him. ‘She’s caught something, her temperature’s very high. The doctor will be here soon.’

‘I’ll go now.’

He turned to leave, but she said, ‘Don’t go, Jack. I need to talk to you.’

He sat at the table rather than in the chair in front of the fire. ‘I suppose it’s all over. It’s time, isn’t it, Jess?’

‘For us to be over?’ She smiled sadly. ‘Yes, it is.’ Her hair hadn’t been combed, and it lay in untidy waves and curls around her face. For once, she hadn’t used any lipstick or the stuff she put on her eyes or her cheeks. She looked pale and tired and also, for the first time, as if she were getting on a bit. But in his eyes she had never been more beautiful or desirable.

‘Are you … ?’ He couldn’t think of the right word. ‘Pregnant’ sounded a bit raw, a bit too obvious. But she said it for him.

‘Pregnant? No, Jack. It’s a bit too soon to know, but I very much doubt it.’

‘I’m sorry.’ He felt quite forlorn. This was what he’d wanted, but it had happened too suddenly. He needed time to get used to the idea of Jess disappearing out of his life.

‘Oh, Jack, don’t be sorry.’ Her green eyes twinkled. ‘I know you did your best.’

‘I did my utmost,’ he was saying when the front door opened, and the doctor came in. Jack departed in a hurry and went straight to the King’s Arms, where he didn’t enjoy himself nearly as much as he’d expected. He left early, and when he’d gone, his mates remarked to each other that it was obvious that Jack Doyle was still in a mood.

Just as Jack’s affair came to a sad, though inevitable end, his son-in-law, Nick Stephens, found himself involved with a woman for the first time since he had left London.

He was still living on the Norfolk coast with Clarence Baines and his daughter Mary. He was still enjoying the peace and tranquillity of his new life. Planes occasionally flew over the area, both British and American, but apart from that, there was no sign of the war. At night, he was able to draw back the curtains and stare out at the dense blackness of the sky, or watch the moon shine down on the inky water or slip in and out of the clouds, creating perfect examples of a silver lining. The view at all times was spectacular.

He was lying in bed one night in the run-up to Christmas, imagining what the day would be like here, knowing it would be different to every other Christmas he had ever known. After breakfast, unless it was too stormy, he would walk on the beach. Clarence or Mary, or both, might come with him. Mary had been promised a chicken – the family were friendly with local farmers, and eggs or small cuts of meat were often available without the need for ration books.

He was thinking that this would be the strangest Christmas he had ever known when he heard the click of the bedroom door opening, followed by soft footsteps on the wooden floor, and suddenly Mary Baines was in the bed with him.

At first, he was too astonished to respond or say a word. He had never felt attracted to her, but when she touched him, he was unable to resist. He lay there while she virtually took him, roughly, so that it hurt, but it was a new and titillating experience for him, deeply thrilling.

When it was over, she got out of bed and returned to her own room. She hadn’t uttered a single word. The next day, she acted as if nothing had happened and was her same rather withdrawn self. Nick wondered if she remembered the night before, or whether it was some strange form of sleepwalking, but the same thing happened that night, and the night after. It would seem that Nick had ended up in some sort of earthly paradise.

Sheila Reilly never felt there was anything extraordinary about having seven children. In years gone by, it was customary for women to have as many as a dozen kids, even more, so seven didn’t seem all that many in comparison. The only time it felt like a trial was at Christmas; obtaining seven decent presents wasn’t easy when there was a war on.