A Mersey Mile Read online

  To my mother, Frances Evelyn Nixon, previously Girling, née Higgins. Not a day passes without thoughts and memories of you, Mam.

  You were a beacon of light and a bundle of mischief.

  Missed by me and Alice.

  Contents

  1955

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  1956

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Lament of a Twelve-Year-Old

  About the Author

  By Ruth Hamilton

  Acknowledgements

  1955

  One

  Polly Kennedy, whose cafe resided happily at the bread and banter end of the market, could seldom resist a well-heated argument. Already pink, bothered and overworked, she put two fingers in her mouth and gave birth to a whistle loud enough to fetch the local constabulary and the river police. Several breakfasters shivered, while one poor chap suffered a short coughing bout after swallowing his mouthful of Horniman’s ‘down the wrong hole’.

  Others, with food poised on forks halfway to their mouths, froze. Their eardrums still felt the pain long after the shrill sound had died. Polly’s whistles were near-fatal. She spoke now. ‘Hey, let’s be having this right, eh? Because that’s a load of rubbish, Ida, sorry. My Uncle Tom grabbed top prize in the loot. A massive gas cooker, he got. He tried to fix it in the house himself, only the back kitchen blew up and the street had to be evacuated. It was like the Great War all over again, but with more damage. Mam told us all about it. She said she’d never seen Auntie Nellie in such a state.’

  Ida’s jaw dropped. ‘Bloody hell, love. Did he get killed or hurt?’

  ‘Very nearly.’ Polly’s tone remained even. ‘Auntie Nellie chased after him down the back alleys with her rolling pin and a carving knife.’ A roar of laughter donated by all present followed this remark. ‘He shifted like the Flying Scotsman, I was told.’

  ‘We were all better runners in the old days,’ Ida said.

  Polly picked up the thread of her story. ‘They moved out to Litherland and he stopped smoking after the explosion,’ she added. ‘But he did take to drink in a big way. They were talking about giving him a bed down the Throstle’s Nest, because the landlord could never get him to go home. That would be because of Auntie Nellie and her weaponry. Even when they’d moved, he came back to the Throstle’s at least twice a week and slept on floors till he sobered up.’

  ‘Not surprised,’ groaned Jimmy Nuttall, who was bent double with glee. ‘He’d need a rest, the mad bugger.’

  ‘Oh, that was nothing, because he went worse. Woke up on the Isle of Man ferry, no ticket, no idea of how he got there. So it was more than just a gas cooker; he was an idiot for seventy odd years. Specialized in it, he did. I reckon he had a degree in lunacy, but he wasn’t one for bragging about his qualifications.’

  ‘Well, a sofa’s bigger than a cooker,’ Ida insisted. ‘See, if we’re talking size and awkwardness of things what got pinched in the loot—’

  ‘Not as heavy, though,’ Polly insisted. ‘Gas stoves weigh a ton, believe me. A piece of furniture gets nowhere near when it comes to shifting. I mean, it took five men to see to all Cal’s cooking stuff in that back kitchen. Very, very heavy.’ She waved towards the door that led from the cafe to the residential area. ‘One of them got a hernia, and another slipped a disc, but our Uncle Tom was six foot five in his socks and very strong. The Kaiser never troubled him, so an exploding gas cooker was a minor problem. Died of pneumonia at the finish, poor soul.’

  Ida was determined not to be outdone. ‘We couldn’t get the sofa through the bloody door. Wedged for over an hour, half in and half out, no shaking it all about. So the mad fools took the door and the frame off, didn’t they? Everybody had to come and go the back way for ages after that, because the bloody front door wouldn’t open when they put it back all cockeyed.’ She paused for breath and allowed her audience to laugh.

  ‘When the rent man came, Gran paid him through the letterbox and told him she’d be withholding payment if he didn’t get her a new door. They got one in the end, like. Ooh, and it was a lovely sofa, too.’ She sighed heavily. ‘Till our Graham peed on it. Very slow to train, our Graham. Never knew whether he was coming, going, or just been, not till he was near five years old. The doctor couldn’t do nothing.’ She sat for a moment and thought about days gone by. ‘He’s still a bit slow, our Graham,’ was her final statement.

  ‘I miss something from back then, but I can’t for the life of me work out what it was,’ said Jimmy Nuttall. ‘Odd boots, different colours, different sizes, no laces, no socks, blinking blisters on me blisters. Cane nearly every day at school, not enough to eat, Mam crying cos Dad was down the Newsham necking his wages. Us hiding from the rent man, good thumping from a copper for pinching fruit down the market. But we all look back at the good old days, eh? Are we soft or what?’

  Quiet arrived at last. Those old enough to remember it nursed fond memories of the police strike of 1919. They’d had new clothes, new towels, bedding, curtains, cushions, pots and pans, all stolen from shops in town. Military tanks and ships spilled their human cargo into the city, but the loot went on regardless of the forces. Soldiers and sailors arrested several for drawing blood, but by the time they’d carted off a few vanloads of criminals they were sorely outnumbered by amateur crooks.

  Amateurs fared better, since they took real pride in the thoroughness of their work. Professionals got overconfident and landed up in the Bridewell, but the untutored invested care in their art. And one widespread opinion was that the lads in military uniform supported the civilian force’s withdrawal of labour, so a good time was had by all. Over the years, the loot, enhanced and coloured in with bright verbal paints, shone like a jewel in a box of base metal.

  Jack Fletcher, costermonger, said his old man brought home four parrots and a female rabbit. ‘He liked animals, me dad. But we was overrun – bloody rabbit was pregnant, and we couldn’t kill ’em, hadn’t the heart. So we set the little buggers loose on the allotments and they ate everything. The parrots was good. Three of them’s still alive, but they don’t live in our house. The blooming wife’s bad enough – she’s a meeting on her own, always argufying and moaning.’ He sighed. ‘Flaming women. Who needs a bleeding parrot?’

  There followed a mixed recipe whose ingredients included headboards, a box of mouth organs, antimacassars, knickers (outsize and tea-rose pink) for Auntie Gladys, a roll of lino, cases of whisky, stockings, buckets, a tin bath, feather pillows, rugs, tablecloths, and a Hoover that never got used due to the total absence of electricity.

  ‘It done no good for the cops, though,’ said Ida. ‘Only ones with guts enough to strike was us and London. Some got sacked, and others didn’t thrive, never given no stripes. And we shown ’em. We shown ’em how much the cops was needed by doing the loot. We done the police a favour, or so we thought.’

  Polly nodded. ‘And now, we pay. The sins of the fathers, eh?’

  ‘Even my Holy Communion frock was pinched,’ mused Hattie the greengrocer. ‘About three sizes too big, but it was the only one left.’ She’d gone to the altar to receive her first wafer without the slightest stain on her innocent soul, but with her dad’s dishonesty hanging loosely from her tiny frame and secured to her liberty bodice by nappy pins.

  Apart from the sound of cutlery on plates, and cups clattering in saucers, the cafe was once again silent. It had long been rumoured that certain people in the Home Office wanted Scotland R
oad and its network of adjoining streets demolished. The reason? Slum clearance, already begun long before the Second War, was the official line, but everyone knew that the real threat to authority was the absolute solidarity of this neighbourhood. Yes, there were rows and fights, but any intruder or interloper was seen off by a suddenly united street. Did the Home Office hate Catholics, especially those whose veins ran with the blood of Ireland, Scotland and Italy?

  ‘I still say the loot finished us,’ Polly said eventually. ‘We are and always have been a force to be reckoned with. They know we’re capable of misbehaving to the point of riot. Will we go quietly? Will we?’

  Cutlery banged rhythmically on tables. ‘No, no, we won’t go,’ was the chant. ‘They said we can come back when they’ve replaced our houses,’ Ida screamed above the clattering. ‘Do we believe them? Do we believe this bastard government? Are they going to rebuild here?’

  ‘No, no, we won’t go.’ Banging and chanting increased in volume. Scotland Road was Liverpool’s Vatican, a whole city within a city, and Scotland Road was angry. When this, the very heartbeat of English Catholicism, was suffering arrhythmia, the whole city felt it, and it needed to travel further afield. But could they make a stand? Could they defeat the City of Liverpool, Westminster, the big southern institutions that held all the money in their jealously guarded, well-protected vaults?

  Polly, knowing she could be done for inciting riot, delivered a second piercing whistle. ‘OK, folks. You’ve businesses to run until our own countrymen come and finish off what Adolf started. Eat up and shut up; we’ve all got jobs to do.’ She walked back to her counter. They wanted to ride into battle, but they had to wait for war to come to them in the form of letters telling them to pack their bags and prepare to be moved. Guy Fawkes and his shower had the right bloody idea, Polly mused as she wiped the counter’s surface.

  ‘Polly? Can you shove this lot between a few slices of bread? I just remembered, I’ve got to be somewhere.’ The man gave her his famous wink. She’d always suspected that it was meant to be fetching, but it was just funny. There again, he considered himself to be a laugh a minute, so perhaps he was making an attempt at humour. Polly didn’t know how she felt about him. Yes, she did; no, she didn’t, yes she did . . .

  ‘You should be on the stage, but don’t give up your day job just in case,’ she advised while stacking a few dirty dishes under the counter. It was time Frank Charleson learned to wipe his own bum.

  ‘Polly?’

  She looked him up and down. ‘What gives you the idea I’ve got time to be making butties with a full cooked brekky? Would you like both eggs on one sarnie, and where would you like me to stick your sausage? Shall I put your fried slice between two unfried slices? Any suggestions about bacon and black pudding can be written on a postcard and sent to this address. OK?’

  ‘Pol?’ another customer called.

  ‘Hang on, Ernie. Mr Charleson here’s looking for a miracle.’ The proprietor of Polly’s Parlour stared into the eyes of her old friend and adversary. They’d been through a lot together, but it was time for him to get his act straight. To do that, he needed to murder his mother for a start. Her gaze unwavering, she slapped bread, butter and a knife on the counter. ‘Do it your bloody self while I’m busy, Frank,’ she snapped. Seamlessly, she carried on. ‘Ernie? Get this side of the business, give us a hand, and your breakfast will be on the house.’ She poured tea into cups.

  Frank Charleson, determinedly unfazed, began his attempt to make sandwiches. ‘If you can give away free breakfasts, you must be able to pay more rent, Polly Kennedy,’ he said. ‘I seem to be undercharging you.’

  ‘Watch the egg,’ she said, addressing him in the jocular tone she’d used way back when they’d all been teenagers. ‘You’ll have yolk all down the suit if you’re not careful. Car seats, too. Egg can be a bugger to shift. Ernie, two full cooked ready in the kitchen, one with a slice, one without, table three.’ With her right forearm, she pushed damp curls from her face. ‘Jimmy, four teas for yous lot here, love. Come and take them to your table for me, will you?’

  Polly’s Parlour was bustling this morning. People who had businesses along Scotland Road often took breakfast, lunch, or both here. She was loved for her brother’s cooking, her quickness of wit, her eagerness to please, and her tendency to put down anyone who got above him- or herself. Oh, and her prices were reasonable.

  Jimmy Nuttall picked up the tray of teas. ‘How’s Cal?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s all right, love. In the back frying eggs or cooking the books. He still manages to get up to mischief in spite of everything.’

  ‘Ah. Tell him hello from Nutter, babe.’

  ‘I will. Mary? Were you scrambled or poached?’

  ‘Scrambled like me head, Pol. Have you seen what they done to me hair in that bloody shop? What a nightmare, eh? I feel like hiding in the sodding coal shed. I look a right banana, don’t I?’

  ‘More like a poodle,’ was Polly’s delivered opinion.

  ‘Aw, Pol. What am I going to do with it?’

  Polly shouted through the door. ‘Cal? Jimmy Nutter says hiya. Make some scraggy eggs for Mary. Somebody in town’s done her hair, and she wants breakfast to match. She looks like a flaming poodle that wants a trim.’ She gave her attention to the victim of a very tight perm. ‘I told you I’d see to it for you. You know I do hair every night and occasionally at weekends. What’s the point of me wearing myself to the bone when my customers go to town? I happen to be a fully qualified hairdresser, you know.’ The difference was that she now had to front two establishments, since her brother might never again be fit for his own work. And he was so acutely aware of that, so damned apologetic, always blaming himself for being in the wrong place when the crane had swung down.

  Frank Charleson was struggling with knife, bread, butter and a full cooked breakfast. It was clear that he was unused to fending for himself, since his mother had a full-time housekeeper who did everything for both Charlesons. Polly shook her head. Some people were spoilt. One in particular was spoilt almost beyond mending. But oh, he was attractive . . .

  With things slowing down, and Ernie behind the counter, she took over, her attitude more kindly. He missed Ellen; so did she. ‘Look at the state of you, Frank,’ she whispered. ‘Does your mother do everything for you? Does she tie your laces and thread a string through your coat sleeves with gloves on the ends?’

  He grinned. ‘Just between us, she would if I let her. Or Mrs Lewis would. Don’t forget, my mother’s busy training to be bedridden. It’s a full-time job in our house, becoming disabled. She’s diabetic and she lives on chocolate. She’s going the right way to losing her legs or her kidneys.’

  Sometimes, though not often, Polly was glad that she and her brother were orphans. ‘You all right now, though?’

  ‘Not bad, thanks. It gets easier, but I still think about Ellie a lot. She made me happy. Made me laugh. Mother hated her.’

  ‘I know.’ She decided to leave the eggs out of the picnic. ‘Take a few paper napkins to save your clothes. Where are you going, anyway?’

  ‘To increase Mother’s portfolio. Another property auction.’

  ‘Well, don’t be buying any more round here, cos we’re going to be flattened.’ Polly finished organizing his breakfast. ‘And don’t forget to bring the plate back.’ They had a lot in common, because she had a twin brother in a wheelchair, while he had a mother who ruled from a ground-floor bedroom. Mrs Charleson was capable of going about her business, but her son, a widower, had become her feet, eyes and ears since he’d moved back in. She was a miserable, mean old besom who needed a kick up the withers.

  ‘There you go. No egg. You’ll have a better chance at your meeting with a clean shirt and tie. Now, get on with it, and don’t eat while you’re driving, because it’s very dangerous.’

  ‘You sound like my mother.’

  His mother, Norma Charleson, was usually referred to as That Old Cow. ‘Moo,’ Polly said softly.


  ‘Stop it.’ He grinned, picked up his battered breakfast and went outside. Looking at his watch, he decided to take five minutes in the car to eat in peace. Polly’s was busy at the best of times, but Mondays were always crazy. Crazy? His old girl was the crazy one, buying yet more houses to be let and looked after. West Derby and Wavertree, this time.

  He started to think; thinking was not a good idea. Ellen and Polly had been friends since infant school, and Polly had helped at the end with the nursing. Polly was the closest he would ever get to Ellen, and she was as needful as he was. Only she had a lot on her plate – a lot on dozens of plates. Oh well, she was still lovely and a good laugh. The food was a bit cold, but he was starving, so he ate.

  Inside, Polly was starting her first big clear-up while Ernie ate his free breakfast. The half past eight lot had begun to leave, but there’d be another, smaller influx between nine and ten. Where a business had more than one worker, they swapped breakfast shifts. Some couldn’t afford breakfast, of course. They would have a bite at home or bring a pie or a pasty for lunchtime and starve till then. The world wasn’t fair.

  The carry-outs had been and gone. They bought breakfast in the form of bacon butties, because they were Scotty Road’s lone rangers, with no help at all in their shops, and they worked long hours. Again, she thought how unbalanced the world had become. Ellen dead, poor Frank stuck with his mam, Cal working from a wheelchair, all appliances adapted to suit his lowered position in life. Frank had seen to all changes, of course, but he wouldn’t have told his mother how little he’d charged in rental increase. He was a good man, worth ten of the woman who’d birthed him.

  She walked through to the back of the property. Cal worked in a scullery, which had been enlarged by Frank’s team of builders. There were eight gas burners on hobs, two large ovens and a massive grill. Sculleries were known as back kitchens in these parts. The living room, which usually had a range fire installed, was called the kitchen, while a front room was nominated the parlour. Polly’s parlour was larger than most, and was used as a cafe. But parlours in nearby houses were tiny, hallowed, unused except for visitors, and as well furnished as possible. ‘All right, love?’ she asked her brother. ‘Shall I push you through while I wash up?’