A Mersey Mile Read online

  ‘OK.’ Cal Kennedy had become a man of few words since his accident. The middle room was his, though it doubled as a living area for both resident siblings. It housed a sofa, a small table and four chairs, a sideboard and his bed, which was under the stairs. He had gone from lugging heavy loads on the docks to frying eggs for the cafe. Hard work helped him to ignore his problems.

  Sex, the most favoured of his pastimes, had been eliminated from his life, while the girl he had loved had fled to London three months after his accident. And he was left now with Polly, who needed her own life. She’d been abandoned, too, when she’d insisted on looking after him. She slept in the back bedroom upstairs, as the front one had been turned into a hairdressing salon. She never stopped. It was his fault that his sister was working herself to a standstill. Could he ever repay her?

  Every morning and night, a male attendant arrived to get Cal out of or into bed. During the day, Polly had to cope with him, and that was what he hated most. Once the cafe closed at three o’clock, she helped him on and off the commode, kept him clean, did for him things she should have been doing for the children she might never have. He had wrecked her life as well as his own.

  Cal found comfort in his second hobby – drink. The lads sometimes came for him in the evening, wheeling him down to one of many pubs, but much of his drinking was done alone. He didn’t hide the evidence, partly because he couldn’t, but mostly because she understood. As long as he was sober while cooking, she left him to it.

  ‘Pol?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You need a baby.’

  She laughed. ‘Miracles I don’t do. Breakfasts, dinners and hair, I manage, but babies are a bit beyond me. If I see a star, some shepherds and three kings, I’ll let you know and we’ll sing carols, eh?’ Well, at least he was talking for a change.

  Cal swallowed. ‘I wouldn’t mind – wouldn’t blame you – if you got married and left me.’

  ‘Who’d run the cafe? Who’d do hair at night or clean the house? And who’d be the boss? Don’t you think life’s hard enough without having a screaming baby and a snoring husband keeping us awake at night?’

  ‘You should be married,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t know anybody I want to marry, do I?’ This was an outright lie, but she clung to it. Cal and Frank were close friends, and she’d no intention of becoming the subject of a plot.

  ‘I’d be the uncle. We both need more than this, Polly.’

  ‘What we need is to keep going, lad. I can’t stop seeing to the cafe or doing hair, can I? Not yet, anyway.’ Tears stung her eyes, so she walked into the scullery to tackle a mountain of washing-up. She wanted kids. They’d both wanted kids. While he was working on the docks, she was employed by a top-notch hairdresser in town, and they’d both been on good money. In fact, they’d been thinking about deposits on a couple of houses in Bootle . . .

  ‘Thanks for the breakfast, Polly,’ Ernie called before leaving for work. Ernie sometimes helped with the heaving about of Cal Kennedy. They had so many good friends; what would happen when the area was wiped out? Who would care for the weak, the young and the elderly once this society had been fractured? Who would worry about the isolated and the poor? People from the Scotland Road area embraced everyone, no matter what the nationality, colour or creed. Yes, it was largely Catholic, but there was little prejudice until Walking Days, when Catholics and Protestants tormented the life out of each other. It was tradition, and tradition should endure.

  She closed her burning eyes. Somebody from the Docks and Harbour Board had picked her up from work and driven her to the hospital. Cal would probably never walk again. There was a chance that some abilities might return but, for a while at least, he could be incontinent and incapable of marital relations, as they so delicately termed the intimate side of life. Lois had beggared off, anyway, as had Polly’s own fiancé.

  Frank Charleson had sat with them in the hospital, just as they had sat with him while Ellen lost her fight. ‘Four sad people,’ Polly said now as she scraped debris into the pig bin. They’d had poor luck. At school, Ellen had been netball captain, leader of the rounders team, brilliant at games. And all the time, she’d had something massively wrong with her heart, and it eventually affected other major organs. Operations hadn’t worked, and she’d drifted off one sunny afternoon with her husband, her parents and two friends keeping her company at the start of that final journey.

  Old Mother Charleson had struggled without success to hide her delight. She got her boy back. He was useful, and he was exactly where he belonged. She took to her room, issued orders, ate everything the housekeeper put before her and drifted towards severe diabetes on a cloud of selfishness, ignorance and milk chocolate.

  When most of the dishes were clean, Polly dealt with the scouse. This stew, the universal panacea round these parts, was divided up. She shoved some into pastry cases with lids, to be nominated meat and tater pies. Other dollops she placed in circles of pastry, folding them into a shape invented in Cornwall for the miners of tin. Thus one cauldron of scouse became stew, pies and pasties. So that was dinner sorted once the ovens got turned on. When the second surge of breakfasters arrived, she served up what Cal had left in the warmer. The lad needed his rest, and no one complained if the food wasn’t quite up to scratch. They knew and understood the situation in Pol and Cal Kennedy’s house, and they seldom complained.

  With the later breakfast over, Polly locked the cafe door and returned to the living room. Cal was asleep in his wheelchair. She wedged a pillow behind his head and against the wall. Fortunately, customers were used to this. If Cal was asleep, they made do with a smaller menu. The best thing about Scotland Road was that its residents supported one another, though there were some wonderful fights . . .

  Polly sat and fanned herself with a damp tea towel. Mam had been a fighter. Back in the day, the sight of two women rolling about on the cobbles, each with hands in the other’s hair, was not unusual. Mam’s arch enemy had been Theresa Malone from number thirty-four. Theresa Malone’s son was a thief and a liar, and he dragged young Cal into trouble on several occasions. The solution? Another fight, of course. There were plenty of seconds, but no referee.

  Mam and Mrs Malone were both Dublin girls, both redheads, both married to Irishmen. If either husband happened to be around, fighting would be postponed, but it always started with the two women in their doorways, arms folded, faces fixed in solid, stone-hard frowns, mouths turned down, eyes narrowed. As if choreographed, they would take a step towards the centre of the street, their pace quickening as they neared the arena, which always had to be equidistant from the two houses. If fighters lived on the same side of the street, the rules were similar, but the match was played out in the gutter.

  Mam always won. Theresa Malone lost hair, teeth, skin, blood and dignity every time while the crowd cheered and roared. Yet when a stranger arrived from some other area of the city and trouble started, Theresa helped Mam, and Mam helped Theresa. It was a special kind of insanity, so special that Theresa nursed Mam during her final illness. ‘All gone now,’ Polly breathed.

  ‘What’s gone?’

  ‘The time, Cal. The past.’

  ‘The past is always gone,’ he said.

  ‘I was just thinking about Mrs Malone and Mam.’

  ‘Yes.’ He moved the pillow and tossed it on his bed. ‘I remember. She didn’t last long after Mam, did she?’

  ‘They needed one another, Cal. Even the fighting was part of it. Like sisters, they were. It was a sort of race memory from the old country. And the Italians were just as bad, but not as much fun, because they fought in a foreign language.’

  Cal almost smiled. ‘The ice-cream wars. Remember when a Manny wanted to marry a Tog? Did anyone know how to say their full names, by the way? It was worse than Romeo and Juliet. I don’t know how many finished up in clink, but rumour had it that some wardens had to learn Italian at night school. And the two families carried on fighting in there, always being sho
ved in solitary. Even solitary got crowded.’

  ‘Manfredi and Tognarelli,’ she told him. ‘They’re all over Lancashire. Best ice cream ever.’ He remained talkative. She needed to put the pies and pasties in the oven, needed to boil water for vegetables, but Cal was finally managing a conversation. ‘They were nearly as mad as the Irish,’ she said.

  He sighed. ‘Polly?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  ‘There’s no easy way of saying this, so I’ll just come out with it. I know now when I need the commode, right?’

  ‘Yes.’ She waited. ‘And?’

  ‘And I can take some of my weight on my legs, yes? I’m capable,’ he said. After another pause, he continued. ‘I need a clean girl to have my child if you aren’t going to have a family, because I probably won’t marry. But I’d get somebody in to help with the child so that you’d be free. It’s just that I want to be a dad.’ Did that pretty young nurse like him? She was probably the same with all patients, yet there was warmth, tenderness, a hand on his shoulder offering comfort and encouragement. . . No. Who wanted the non-walking wounded? Would he ever walk? Linda Higgins, her name was . . .

  Polly sat down suddenly at the table. ‘How the bloody hell do we manage that, Cal? Do I walk about interviewing folk and filling in forms? I mean, if I got somebody from Mother Bailey’s, she could be diseased. Normal girls want a wedding ring first.’

  ‘I don’t want a wife; I need a son or a daughter.’

  Polly had never heard anything like this in her life, and she said so. ‘But women don’t part with their kids. When they’ve cursed the world through all that pain, they fall in love with the baby. It’s nature’s way; it’s why we hang on to the mucky, howling little buggers.’

  He disagreed. Everybody needed money. Somewhere, there was a woman who would bear a child for cash.

  ‘Sell her son or daughter? If I had a child, I’d keep it. No matter how much money I was offered, nobody would ever get their hands on my baby. Why do you want one, anyway? To push your wheelchair when you’re older?’ Immediately, she wished she could bite back her words. ‘Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. It was a good question. The answer’s no.’

  ‘Then how could you mind a small child?’

  He smiled. ‘Like I said, I’ll get somebody in. I’m going to walk again. Nobody will want to marry a lame man, and I’ll never walk without some kind of help. Anyway, I’ve a late appointment Thursday, so come and see what I can do. There’s a lot of pain in my legs. The new pills are painkillers.’

  Polly blinked back a new river of saline. He was pleased by pain. Any sensation in his legs, good or bad, was something to be celebrated. ‘Have you walked, love?’

  He nodded. ‘Muscles are weak, but I’ll get there, Pol. No two ways about it, I’ll always be crippled, but not like this. I’ll need crutches – sticks at best, but something’s healed. We have to go slow, cos we could mess it up all over again, but come and watch me, queen.’

  And that was the moment. She ran out of strength, knelt down and hugged him. Tears intermingled until they were both exhausted. God was there, and God was good, because He’d looked down on Callum Kennedy and allowed a miracle to take place. ‘You won’t need to pay, Cal. Somebody will love you.’

  ‘But what if—’

  ‘What if nothing. Don’t be in such a rush. Look at us both; we’re wiped out. You are still a good bloke and a very handsome one. There’s a girl for you.’

  They were tired to the bone, yet they carried on regardless, carrots and peas on hobs, pasties and pies in the oven with a huge apple crumble, Cal making custard while Polly wiped tables in the cafe. Her brother wanted a normal life. Somewhere in this city, there was a girl who could love a man with bad legs. He wanted children, sons and daughters or nieces and nephews; he wanted life around him. At last, he was confiding in her. She put dishes of pickled beetroot and red cabbage in the centre of each table. Was life threatening to improve? She shouldn’t get her hopes up; neither should Cal.

  Customers found Polly unusually quiet when she opened up at dinner time. Bursting to tell somebody Cal’s better news, she sealed it inside herself, scarcely daring to speak in case her twin’s secret spilled out. He might walk. He might be able to sit behind a counter and take money for sweets, newspapers, or whatever they chose to sell when they moved on to . . . to where?

  ‘Where will they send us?’ she asked of no one in particular.

  ‘As far away from our city as they can,’ answered Dusty Den, the rag and bone man. ‘Have you got Flick’s carrots there, Pol? He looks forward to his snack.’

  ‘Eat your dinner,’ was her reply. ‘Let me feed him.’ She went outside to Den’s famous steed. He was a full-size dray horse, because his owner refused to overload a pony. ‘Ruined, aren’t you?’ Polly asked the animal. ‘Better fed than some round here. Good old days?’ She stroked the blaze of white on his face. ‘Were they really? Do you remember anything, or are you too young?’

  There were two sides to every story, she told herself. She remembered stillbirths, neonatal deaths, the terrified screams of mothers losing their lives in childbirth. Diphtheria raced through families and from one street to another; even the church closed its doors during one epidemic. Tuberculosis had been common, as had scarlet fever, while the general health of most had been poor. But this was home. People who lived on or near Scotty had always loved the place.

  Parents did what they could, but they were fighting radical decay combined with poverty, and few won that battle. It was partly due to the houses. They were draughty, sometimes infested, often damp. Yes, better housing was needed, but why couldn’t the powers replace dwellings here a few at a time? ‘Because they want us shifted permanently, Flick. Divide and rule’s the name of the game.’ Scotland Road had been blamed for the 1919 loot, and had been condemned because of it. ‘Uncle Tom did more damage than he realized with that bloody gas cooker,’ she told the horse.

  She stood for a moment and looked at the road she loved, a road that was famous all over the world. The spine of this community would be broken within years, and no physiotherapy, no crutch, would help it back to its feet. Scotty’s men had fought just years ago alongside the better fed to defeat a monster, and their neighbourhood was now threatened. Yes, give them new houses, but no, don’t take their history away. Was this a country fit for heroes? Possibly. Unless you were from Scotty Road, in which case you didn’t count.

  It was a beautiful place, vibrant, loud, busy. It might have been cleaner, but it had everything people needed, every kind of shop from wet fish to pawnbroker, from vegetables to pianos. She tried to imagine it broken, empty and unloved, but she failed. This was the centre of so many people’s universe, the very pulse of life. Could there be a Liverpool without Scotty? Could there be a port without docks, fish without chips, woman without man? She still missed the rotter who had abandoned her . . .

  She went in to help Cal dole out generous helpings of apple crumble and custard. All twenty-four seats were occupied, so generosity veered towards the custard on this occasion. ‘I’m going to make crème caramel,’ Cal announced. ‘Need a bain-marie.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘French for a bath – you stick your cream caramels in the water.’

  ‘Oo-er. You been reading again, our Cal? You want to watch that, you’ll be having a brainstorm.’

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked. He knew her so well. ‘Thinking about Greg?’

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted. ‘Pass me this morning’s bacon.’ She put the cold bacon between slices of bread and went out through the back door. Urchins were fewer these days, because people managed better, but a few still arrived and waited quietly for butties. ‘Share them,’ she said to the tallest child. Then she supervised while the food was doled out. ‘Look after one another,’ she ordered. ‘Cos that’s what it’s about. We’re Scotties, and that’s what we do.’

  There were fewer Scotland Roaders these day
s. Yet those whose houses had been eradicated often walked or bicycled down from the districts in which they had been planted. They bought what they could carry, drank in the pubs, ate in Polly’s and visited friends whose homes remained intact. They hated their new lives. City dwellers of long standing, they disliked flats, newly built terraces and semis, the schools, the shops if there were any; and above all, they missed each other. Gran and Auntie Lil were a mile away, God alone knew where the neighbours had ended up, and several children kept running away back to the only life they’d ever known.

  One old dear had summed it up in the cafe a week ago over a cup of tea and a pudding. ‘We’ve got gardens, but nobody has a lawnmower, so the grass is up to our ear’oles; we’ve got hallways so floors in rooms stay cleaner. But when dirt walked in round here, it brought friends with it. Give me the bloody muck any day, love.’ They were, Polly thought, like the tribes of Israel in the Old Testament, wandering hither and yon, slaves to Egypt, to Rome and to the whims and fancies of whoever walked at the front. Except that this Liverpool crowd of displaced persons had been split up by their own government.

  Polly entered the living room. ‘Cal?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Strength in numbers, eh?’

  ‘If you say so.’

  ‘Well, they’re knocking some of Everton down. We need to join up with the Proddies.’

  ‘And get our own people back from Kirkby or wherever,’ he said.

  She agreed. ‘Relatives in Ireland and Scotland, if they can afford to come. The priests will let them sleep in church halls. Italian ice-cream folk from all over the country. We fight, Cal.’

  ‘That’s right, love. We fight. Like Mam, no rules of engagement. Teeth, hair and skin – till they run over us with demolition machinery. Park me at the front. Whether or not I’m walking, stick me in the wheelchair and see what they do. Let them squash a bloody cripple.’