The Seven Streets of Liverpool (18 page)

‘Sean, darlin’,’ she said softly, kneeling beside them both. ‘Oh, Sean!’

Sean looked at her. Nothing was making sense. ‘Where am I?’

‘You’re home, darlin’,’ Alice whispered. ‘Safe at home.’

An hour later, Colette turned up at Jack Doyle’s house. Eileen had just returned from Mass and was packing ready to go back to the cottage later in the afternoon.

‘Our Alice wants Jack round ours straight away. It would seem that Sean is himself again,’ Colette announced.

Jack was upstairs preparing himself for a Sunday session at the King’s Arms. ‘Dad!’ Eileen screeched. ‘Our Sean’s better. Let’s get round there straight away.’

‘Alice only wants Jack for now.’ Colette tossed her head. ‘She said you and your Sheila can come later. She doesn’t want to confuse him with too many new faces – that’s exactly what she said.’

Eileen believed it. Alice was a bossy little madam. Still, she only had Sean’s welfare at heart. Her father came storming downstairs and shot out of the house at the speed of light, leaving Eileen to continue her packing.

Eileen and Sheila were allowed to see Sean later that afternoon.

‘He received a shock to his system,’ Alice diagnosed. ‘When faced with Edward about to put his hand in the fire, all his feelings came back in a rush and now he’s himself again.’

Not quite himself, Eileen and Sheila thought afterwards when they discussed their brother between them. His face was too pale, his brain not what it should be, his voice – after the initial roar – little more than a whisper. This was Sean at a very low key, a Sean who actually cried at one point.

‘Oh, but he’ll get better,’ Sheila said, more as if to reassure herself than anyone else.

‘He’s bound to get better,’ Eileen agreed in the same sort of voice.

Later that evening, back at the cottage, everywhere felt slightly damp, so Eileen lit fires to warm the place up a bit. Nicky collected all his toys together, put them on the settee and played with them one by one, as if he’d missed them. Napoleon jumped on Eileen’s knee and allowed her to stroke him for almost an hour, after which he jumped off and became his old arrogant, unfriendly self again.

It wasn’t until she was listening to the BBC news on the wireless that she remembered Nick’s letter and retrieved it from the drawer in the telephone table. She guessed he’d written it after he’d gone back to that awful flat in Fulham and discovered that Doria had left, but it was hard to tell. He merely said that he had decided to leave his job and was unsure what he wanted to do next. He advised her not to write to Birdcage Walk – she recalled bitterly that he’d never told her he’d left there, or about the flat in Fulham – and said he would get in touch as soon as he had acquired a new address.

‘Look after yourself and Nicky, my dear Eileen. I look forward to this damn war being over and life returning to normal again. Yours, Nick.’

It wasn’t a romantic letter, not the sort of letter a wife should expect from a husband when they didn’t see each other very often. Well, she couldn’t reply, and would do her utmost not to write letters in her head until the time came when she could put one down on paper and send it to him.

She put the letter away and went upstairs. Tomorrow morning she’d change the bedclothes in the spare room so that it would be ready for the next time someone came to stay, though she didn’t envisage having a visitor at any time in the near future.

She couldn’t have been more wrong.

Chapter 15

Nick wrote a letter to the owners of the flat in Fulham to tell them he was leaving. He put it on the table in the spot where last week Doria had left her letter saying she was going back to her parents in Wimbledon, then threw a few of his oldest clothes in a travelling bag; it was simpler to carry than a suitcase. He was neither glad nor sorry that she had gone. She had told him in her letter not to hesitate to join her in Wimbledon should he so desire.

Well, Nick didn’t desire it, not at all. Her parents were a stuffy, old-fashioned pair. Although they pretended not to care that he wasn’t married to the daughter he’d made pregnant, he sensed that they cared very much, and that if it hadn’t been hurtful to Doria, they would have told him to go to hell.

He thought it would probably be all right that he had packed in his job. It wasn’t very important – in fact he’d always thought it had been invented as a favour to compensate him for the lose of his arm. He had telephoned the supervisor earlier and announced he was leaving, ignoring the spluttered comment that he was supposed to work four weeks’ notice. He never wanted to sit at a desk again; it was slowly driving him mad, as was wearing sensible dark suits every day. It wasn’t as if he needed the money. He’d been left money by his grandfather that would last for years. He supposed he should invest it in something that would earn interest, rather than just leaving it in the bank in a current account.

He’d do that very soon, he decided. He put his most important papers in the side pocket of the bag and left the flat. There was a bus stop across the road where a few people were waiting. A bus approached and he ran to catch it. He had no idea where it was going, or where he wanted to go. Were any farms interested in taking on a one-armed labourer? He climbed the stairs, sat at the front and wondered where it would take him.

It was a lovely sunny, blowy day. Eileen had washed the bedding from the spare room and was pegging it on the line when she heard the knock on the door. She dropped the remainder of the sheets in the laundry basket, checked that Nicky was happily riding his little three-wheeler bike up and down the concrete path, and went to answer it.

At first she didn’t recognise the very pregnant young woman standing outside, until she said, rather impatiently, ‘Hello, Eileen.’

‘Doria!’ she gasped. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’

‘Can I come in first?’ the girl said irritably. ‘I’ve walked all the way from the station for the second day in a row and I’m tired out. They don’t seem to have taxis in this neck of the woods.’

‘Come in.’

Doria picked up a suitcase and entered the house. ‘I came yesterday,’ she said, somewhat aggressively, ‘and you weren’t here.’ She was clearly in a very bad mood. ‘I had to stay in a horrid hotel, the Railway Inn, or something.’

‘Well I didn’t know you were coming, did I?’ Eileen was dismayed at her attitude. Last week they had parted friends. Why had it changed?

She soon found out. ‘Mummy and Daddy were thrilled to have me back,’ Doria explained after she had collapsed into an armchair with a sigh, ‘but they insisted I have the baby adopted. When I found myself pregnant, I actually considered getting rid of it, but after us living together all this time – me and baby, that is – I wouldn’t dream of parting with him, or her. And I had to keep myself hidden while I lived at home. No one must know I’m “in the family way”, as Mummy put it. I never realised they were so old-fashioned. If we had visitors, I was supposed to take myself upstairs.’

‘Has Nick been in touch?’

‘No, Nick has not been in touch,’ Doria said crossly. ‘I telephoned the office the other day and was told he had left without working his notice, just a phone call, that’s all. They’re very angry with him there, as are Mummy and Daddy.’

‘That’s not like Nick,’ Eileen murmured.

‘No,’ Doria conceded. ‘I must admit it isn’t like him at all. Until recently, he was always very reliable. I think, between us, we’ve got him down.’

‘
I
haven’t done anything to get him down,’ Eileen said angrily. ‘I have always been exceptionally patient with him. It was losing his arm that’s got him down.’

‘Perhaps you shouldn’t have been so patient. Perhaps you should have given him a good shake and told him to pull his socks up.’

‘Perhaps
you
shouldn’t have seduced him – that’s what you told me you’d done when I was in London. Without you around, he might have been his old self again by now.’

‘Mum!’ Nicky entered the room accompanied by Napoleon, his tail erect and bristling with indignation at the sight of a stranger in his house. Nicky looked shyly at Doria. ‘Hello.’

Doria’s ill temper vanished in an instant. ‘Hello, little boy. What’s your name?’

‘Nicky.’

‘My name is Doria.’ She held out her hand for him to shake. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Nicky.’

Nicky grinned and shook her hand, very grown up. ‘It’s nice to meet you, D …’ He looked at Eileen. ‘I can’t remember her name, Mum.’

‘It’s Doria, love.’

‘Why have you come to see my mum?’ he asked the visitor – a very unwelcome visitor, Eileen thought sourly, but an attractive one all the same, with her mass of ringlets and her lovely blue eyes. She wore straight black slacks and a dark pink maternity smock with an embroidered yoke. She hoped the woman would go away soon – but why on earth had she come all this way in the first place?

‘Why have I come to see your mum?’ Doria put a finger to her chin and pretended to wonder. ‘Because I’m her friend and she’s invited me to stay until my baby is born in June.’

‘I have done no …’ Eileen spluttered, ‘no such thing,’ she added more quietly.

‘No, you’re right,’ Doria said airily, ‘but it was your idea I go home to my parents. It’s your fault I’m in the position I’m in. The least you can do to make up for it is to let me live here for a while. I honestly have nowhere else to go.’

Eileen could think of numerous arguments against this, as well as suggestions for places she could go, but she knew Doria wouldn’t be prepared to accept them. Anyroad, if the girl refused to budge, she couldn’t very well physically throw her out or demand that the police come and do it. All she could do was let her stay and put up with it.

‘Are you wearing your wedding ring?’ she asked.

Doria held up her left hand, showing the ring on her third finger.

‘You’ll have to invent a husband. Me sister and her friend know the truth, but I don’t want the whole world knowing you’re on your way to becoming an unmarried mother.’ People would ask her all sorts of questions. Just imagine if she told everyone that Nick was the father of Doria’s baby, who would be Nicky’s half-brother or sister!

‘My, you’re frightfully narrow-minded, Mrs Stephens,’ Doria said in a dead posh voice.

‘I’m not, actually, but some of me family and friends are.’ Her dad would be shocked to the core. ‘Oh, and another thing. You’d best think up a name other than Mallory. Peter has become a family friend. It’ll confuse everyone no end if they find out he’s your brother.’

Doria’s jaw dropped. ‘I know you said you knew Peter, but how on earth has he become a family friend?’

‘You’ll have to ask him that.’ Just at the moment, Eileen couldn’t be bothered to explain.

‘What,’ Leslie Taylor enquired of his daughter, ‘were you and a crowd of other people doing last Saturday morning marching through the business area of Liverpool?’

Phyllis gave him a look of contempt. ‘Were you following us?’

‘Yes,’ her father conceded miserably. ‘I saw you leave the house and went upstairs on the tram you caught into town. And please don’t give your poor old dad a horrible look like that, Phyllis. It’s not a very nice thing to do.’

‘I wouldn’t give you horrible looks if you weren’t such an idiot and acted like a proper father.’

‘Don’t call me an idiot, either.’

Phyllis gave him a truly awful look. ‘Fathers don’t spy on their daughters.’ She had gone back to work at her various schools on Monday, and her father had been waiting outside the house when she arrived home today. Her mother was on the afternoon shift at the hospital.

‘Can I come in, darling?’

Phyllis stood aside to let him in. ‘Kindly don’t call me “darling”, Dad. You’ve never did it when we lived in Beverley.’

He stamped his way along the hall into the living room, where he threw himself into a chair. ‘What am I going to do?’ he pleaded. ‘I can’t go back to Dawn’s. The police are threatening to come and take Mick O’Brien away by force. Can’t you think of a way I can get back in with your mum?’

‘No, and anyway – or anyroad, as they say in Liverpool – what makes you think I want you and Mum back together? We are both very happy without you.’ Actually, Phyllis would quite like him back; he was a hopeless father, but fun to live with, always cracking jokes and doing stupid things. She remembered the advice Eileen Stephens had offered. ‘It’s up to you to think of how to get back with Mum,’ she told him, laughing. ‘Perhaps you could pretend to recover your memory. It might work.’

It was a hint, and she hoped he would take it.

Leslie Taylor was deep in thought as he made his way towards the public house in Seaforth where he worked. How on earth had he managed to get himself into such a mess? The trouble was, Dawn was so provocatively attractive, and he’d felt lonesome in Bootle on his own, and petrified by the air raids. It had seemed exciting at the time to just disappear from his old life and become someone else. He might even write a novel about it one of these days.

He stopped dead in the middle of Marsh Lane, remembering what his daughter had said. ‘Why don’t you pretend to recover your memory?’ How about if he had an ‘accident’, his memory returned and he could profess total ignorance of what had happened in the meantime?

If he were going to do it, then he should do it now, not let himself think about it, risk changing his mind. He wouldn’t go back to Dawn’s house in Chaucer Street to collect his things. It would be more believable if he only had a few bob in his pocket and wasn’t carrying an identity card. He would announce his name to be Leslie Taylor and deny all knowledge of what had happened to him since 1941. Even if they produced Dawn, he would fail to recognise her and profess total ignorance of Mick O’Brien, who he had pretending to be all this time.

He turned on his heel and walked in the direction of Marsh Lane station, where he knew there was a set of steps up to the platforms.

A train had just come in when he arrived, but once everyone had gone, he climbed to the top of the stairs and looked back, ready to throw himself down. It looked awfully steep! If he wasn’t careful, he could cause himself a serious injury, or even genuinely lose his memory. He walked halfway down the steps, but it still looked dangerous. In the end, he sort of let himself roll down the final three steps, banging his head deliberately so he would have a bruise.

He lay prone at the foot of the steps to Marsh Lane station and waited to be found.

‘Nurse Taylor, Nurse Taylor!’

Staff Nurse Winifred Taylor looked up when she heard the cry. She was in her office in the children’s wards bringing the records up to date. The ward was only half full. Children – and a goodly proportion of adults – were much healthier than they’d been when she’d started nursing more than twenty years ago. Of course, she’d had to leave when she got married – for a reason she could never fathom, only single women were allowed to be nurses.

But the war had changed all that, just as the basic rations had improved the diet of the entire population, making them healthier. The rich might complain about the limited variety of food available, little realising it was doing them the world of good.

‘Nurse Taylor!’ A young nurse had appeared at the door of her office, her eyes bright with excitement. ‘There’s a chap in Emergency who says his name is Leslie Taylor. When we told him what year it was, he claims he can’t remember anything that has happened since May 1941 – you know, when we had those terrible air raids. We wondered, me and Staff Nurse Bennett, that is, if he’s your husband. Staff Nurse Bennett said he’s been missing for ages.’ She sighed a sigh of pure happiness at the idea of being at the centre of such a drama. ‘Would you like to come and take a look at him, Nurse Taylor?’

‘Yes, Nurse.’ Winifred Taylor got to her feet. ‘I’ll come now.’

The emergency ward was on the ground floor. She followed the young nurse downstairs, along corridors and around corners. ‘We put him in a room on his own,’ she was informed, ‘once Staff realised who he was – or who he might be, like.’

An older nurse was holding a glass of water for the new patient, a remarkably handsome gentleman in his early forties. She smiled when Nurse Taylor walked in; Winifred’s own face was totally devoid of expression. ‘I’ll leave you two alone together,’ she said, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

The patient raised his head slightly to stare at the newcomer.

‘Winnie?’ he said weakly.

‘Oh, come off it, Leslie,’ Winifred said in a voice the opposite of weak. ‘I know darned well you haven’t lost your memory. You’ve been passing yourself off as a man called Mick O’Brien for the last few years and living in Chaucer Street with a woman called Dawn. Did you really expect to take me in with this charade?’

‘Well, yes.’ The invalid pushed himself into a sitting position on the bed. Apart from an insignificant bruise on his forehead, he appeared to be in the best of health. ‘If you’ve known all this time, why didn’t you come and rescue me?’

‘
Rescue
you! Were you being kept prisoner?’

‘Well, no,’ he conceded. ‘But if you knew I hadn’t lost my memory, why did you and Phyllis come all the way from Beverley to look for me?’

‘At first we thought you were dead and your body would eventually be found. Then we went to the cinema and saw a film and genuinely thought you had amnesia, like Ronald Colman in
Random Harvest
– or at least I did; I don’t think Phyllis was ever convinced.’

‘She wasn’t, actually.’

‘How on earth would you know that?’ Winifred asked in astonishment.