A Mersey Mile (2 page)

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?’

‘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 shoved in
solitary. Even solitary got crowded.’