The Seven Streets of Liverpool Read Free

when she burst into tears.
    ‘Me mam’s only come home with a fella,’ she sobbed. ‘She hasn’t done that in ages.’
    ‘Oh dear!’ Until three years ago, Freda’s mother Gladys had been a hopeless drunk, selling herself on the streets night after night; anything to get her hands on a bottle of gin, her favourite tipple. Her house was a pigsty, while her children, Freda and six-year-old Dicky, were mainly left to be fed and clothed by the neighbours.
    When the war started, the children were evacuated to Southport, where Freda had learnt there was a different way of living. It was much better to be clean than dirty, for example, and wearing nice clothes was a pleasure. It was a miracle how lovely her hair looked after it had been shampooed and combed. She hadn’t known it was such a nice colour. She returned from Southport with Dicky determined to change their lives.
    And by sheer willpower she had done it. Her mother had more or less been forced to get a job – she worked in the Co-op grocer’s on the vegetable counter – Dicky went regularly to school for a change, and Freda had done so well there that she had passed the scholarship for grammar school and had been at Seafield Convent since she was eleven.
    But now it seemed Gladys had returned to her old ways.
    ‘Where did she go last night, luv?’ asked Brenda. Freda usually kept a close eye on her mother’s activities.
    She was surprised at the girl’s reply.
    ‘Midnight Mass,’ Freda said sullenly.
    ‘She can’t have picked up a fella at Midnight Mass, surely!’
    ‘Well he’s upstairs in the box room. I heard him coughing.’
    ‘And where’s your mam?’
    ‘She sleeps in the room with me. She’s still there.’
    ‘Would you like me to come in and sort things out, Freda?’
    ‘No, ta. I’ll do it meself.’ Freda reached out and took the parcels containing the Juliet cap and Dicky’s scarf out of Brenda’s hands. ‘Thanks for the presents,’ she said, closing the door.
    ‘Merry Christmas,’ Brenda wished the empty air. But she had forgotten that she still had her daughters with her.
    ‘Merry Christmas, Mam,’ they said together.
    ‘Look, Mam, the sun’s come out,’ observed Monica. ‘On Christmas morning an’ all.’ They couldn’t remember it having happened before.
    They held on to her skirt as they walked back to their own house. Inside, they took turns looking at themselves in their new frocks in the mirror in the parlour where their mother made clothes on her Singer sewing machine for people from all over Liverpool. They stood on their toes and fluttered their arms – they’d recently started having ballet lessons.
    Brenda sang happily as she began to peel her own potatoes ready for dinner. This was what she liked best, order and a quiet atmosphere. And unlike most women in the street, she didn’t have to wait until after three o’clock when the pubs emptied before sitting down to eat. Xavier, her louse of a husband, had left home and would hopefully never return.
    After an early dinner, seeing as the sun was out, she’d take the girls for a walk along the Docky, and when they got back they’d play snakes and ladders or ludo – she’d bought them a fairly decent set of games from a second-hand shop.

    Who should she wake up first – her mam or her fancy man? Freda bit her lip. And had Mam actually gone to Midnight Mass, or had she passed some pub that had stayed open after it should have closed and been unable to resist nipping inside for a quick gin that turned into several gins, giving Mass a miss, as it were?
    Halfway up the stairs, she stopped and thought. She could hear Dicky moving around in his bedroom – probably looking at his pressies. She’d managed to get him a few nice things: a little boat with a sail that he could take to the pool in the park in the summer, a bow and arrow, and a Dandy annual – he wouldn’t mind that it was a few years old and more than a bit well thumbed. It was a pity that