A Mersey Mile

A Mersey Mile Read Free Page A

Book: A Mersey Mile Read Free
Author: Ruth Hamilton
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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

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