Daughters of the Mersey
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Authors: Anne Baker
Anne Baker
Copyright © 2012 Anne Baker
The right of Anne Baker to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
First published as an Ebook by Headline Publishing Group in 2012
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library
eISBN : 978 0 7553 9150 9
HEADLINE PUBLISHING GROUP
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London NW1 3BH
About the Author
Anne Baker trained as a nurse at Birkenhead General Hospital, but after her marriage went to live first in Libya and then in Nigeria. She eventually returned to her native Birkenhead where she worked as a Health Visitor for over ten years before taking up writing. She now lives with her husband in Merseyside. Anne Baker’s other Merseyside sagas are all available from Headline and have been highly praised.
By Anne Baker and available from Headline
Like Father, Like Daughter
Paradise Parade
Legacy of Sins
Nobody’s Child
Merseyside Girls
Moonlight on the Mersey
A Mersey Duet
Mersey Maids
A Liverpool Lullaby
With a Little Luck
The Price of Love
Liverpool Lies
Echoes Across the Mersey
A Glimpse of the Mersey
Goodbye Liverpool
So Many Children
A Mansion by the Mersey
A Pocketful of Silver
Keep The Home Fires Burning
Let The Bells Ring
Carousel of Secrets
The Wild Child
A Labour of Love
The Best of Fathers
All That Glistens
Through Rose-Coloured Glasses
Nancy’s War
Liverpool Love Song
Love is Blind
Daughters of the Mersey
When Leonie Dransfield’s husband loses everything in the Great Depression, she is forced to get a job to put food on their table. But Steve resents his wife’s success and, trapped in a loveless marriage, Leonie is drawn into the arms of another man. . .
On discovering she is pregnant, Leonie knows her duty lies with her husband and children, though when Amy is born she brings joy to them all. Then the Second World War leads to Amy’s evacuation and, as the bombs fall on Liverpool, her family must find the strength to survive. . .
HAPTER
O
NE
Summer 1929
L
EONIE DRANSFIELD HAD UNDRESSED
for bed. Feeling confused
and worried, she was sitting in front of her dressing table watching Steve, her husband, in her mirror. His movements were slow and awkward and it took him a long time to unstrap his false leg and take it off.
Without it, he needed his crutches to move about and he kept them propped against the side of their bed. He let his false leg clatter to the floor and heaved himself between the sheets; even now she had to look away from that bare stump.
During the war, Steve had fought in the trenches and been horribly injured in the winter of 1917. His left leg had had to be amputated above the knee, and though his other wounds had eventually healed, scars had been left not only on his body but on his mind.
She’d noticed he’d been upset and grumpy over the last few days. He’d said he wasn’t well, that he was plagued by one of his migraines, but now he’d admitted that he’d had this bad news and hadn’t been able to tell her. That made it sound very bad indeed.
She felt anxiety stir within her. ‘What d’you mean, bad news?’
‘You know I’ve sold two shops.’ Steve had inherited a leading
antiques business from his family. ‘You know the business went down in the war and that it’s never really recovered.’
‘Of course I know the shops have been sold.’ Leonie was impatient, afraid something terrible had happened. ‘You said the money would be a nice little nest egg, it would provide a cushion in bad times and a comfort in our old age, but really we need it now to put food on the table and fuel in the grate. What have you done with it? I thought you intended to hand it over to Hawkes and Harmsworth to invest.’
The stockbrokers Hawkes and Harmsworth had served the Dransfield family well over the last fifty years. They still looked after the remnants of the wealth they’d made in antiques.
‘I tried something new. I went to a different firm.’
‘For heaven’s sake! What on earth made you do that?’ Leonie’s heart plummeted. They were desperate for more income. That was why he’d sold the shops in the first place. Surely he hadn’t lost all that money? She could hardly sit still.
Steve groaned. ‘William Hawkes is so old-fashioned. He puts me into companies that don’t earn much interest.’
She leapt up to open the bedroom window. ‘He’s honest, Steve. Yes, he may be conservative, but he’s always been mindful of your interests and doesn’t take unnecessary risks with your money.’
‘I did it for you and the children.’
‘What?’ Leonie could no longer bite back her anger. ‘The last thing I wanted was for you to take risks. You must know that.’
‘I’m sorry. We needed more money. I thought
I could get it. You know I’ve lost my health and strength, I can’t work like a normal man.’
Leonie seethed, everything always came back to that.
She couldn’t help bursting out at him, ‘You were greedy. So not only is there no interest, but the capital has gone too?’
‘It wasn’t my fault. It was out-and-out fraud. They were gangsters, out to do me. I’ve been worried stiff this past week.’
‘Steve, surely you knew there were fraudsters out there who would cheat you if you gave them half a chance? You knew you could trust William Hawkes. I can’t believe you’ve done this.’
Steve looked contrite.
‘Have you reported it to the police?’
‘Yes, but I don’t think anything will come of it. They didn’t hold out much hope of my getting it back.’
‘What’s done is done,’ she said with the resignation she’d learned from married life.
He was only forty-six but he was gauntly thin with rounded shoulders and sparse mouse-brown hair that was greying. Pain and disappointment had dogged him since the last war. He looked old for his years and she felt full of pity for him, but he didn’t want pity. There was nothing he resented more.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t go on at me, Leonie, I can’t stand that. I know I made a mistake and I truly wish I’d stayed with William Hawkes.’
She could see tears welling in his eyes and looked away. She mustn’t say any more, he was given to bouts of depression and she didn’t want to make matters worse. He knew well enough he’d been a fool. ‘If it’s gone, it’s better to put it out of your mind.’
‘But I can’t. What are we going
to do for money? Our income is going down all the time and we’ve got two children to bring up.’
‘We’ll manage somehow,’ Leonie said, giving her darkblond hair a perfunctory brushing – a token of her normal routine. ‘We’ll manage,’ she repeated. ‘We always have.’
She glanced at herself in the mirror and sighed. Worried eyes stared back at her.
Was her fringe and shoulder-length bob getting a bit girlish for her at thirty-six? She wished she had lustrous curls like her children but they’d inherited those from Steve, though his brown hair was anything but lustrous now. Her hair was almost straight with just enough bend in it to frame her face. At one time, Steve used to say it suited her like this.
Leonie got into bed beside him but she couldn’t get to sleep. To be defrauded out of the money they’d been relying on brought them to crisis point.
Leonie had been orphaned at seven years of age and brought up by her Great-Aunt Felicity, who had managed on a small income through thrift and self-sufficiency and using her common sense. Leonie had been brought up to do the same and it was these skills that had helped them survive so far. Steve, on the other hand, had been born to a family that had never gone short. He’d been used to spending money freely and having the best of everything.
When Leonie had become engaged to Steven Dransfield, her Aunt Felicity had said, ‘How fortunate you are, to be marrying into a family like the Dransfields. You’ll never want for anything.’ Leonie had been of the same opinion and had enjoyed every comfort money could buy during the first few years of her marriage. But the war had
changed everything and Aunt Felicity had been proved very wrong.
Leonie knew well enough how they’d managed so far. Steve’s only brother Raymond had been killed at Mons and Steve had inherited all his family’s wealth. First and foremost was the house they lived in, it had been the Dransfield family home and very comfortable in its day. In addition, he’d received the business that had earned a good living for the family over several generations. As they’d been antique dealers, they’d kept the pieces they’d admired most to furnish it, so he’d inherited many valuable objects too. Most of these he’d already sold into the trade because he owned the shops where the value of antiques and fine art could easily be realised.
Steve had been a boarder at a public school and though his children weren’t having that luxury, they were at fee-paying day schools. His mother’s jewellery was the first thing he’d sold to meet that expense.
When they’d had a plumbing problem, Steve had taken an eighteenth-century French ormolu mantel clock to the shop. When a tree had blown down in a gale and taken a few slates off the roof, he’d taken the George III silver tea and coffee service to pay the bill.
Leonie tossed and turned in bed, wondering how on earth they would manage now.
HAPTER
T
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