A Pocketful of Holes and Dreams (2 page)

Mum never let him take me out for the day again.

I kept the half-crown hidden for a couple of weeks, and then one day when I knew Mum needed some extra pennies to buy food I gave it to her, telling her it was from my day out with Dad. She always tried to protect us from my father’s antics, but we all knew. My brother and two sisters were older and had a greater awareness of what was going on than I did, but there is one memory we all share.

We were the last family in our street to get a television set. Mum couldn’t afford to buy one and had gone into debt paying the deposit on a slot TV. You had to insert a shilling into the meter at the back, which made it the most expensive way of viewing, but it was the only one she could afford. She was so proud of it and put it in the best room, our front parlour.

I remember, it was a cold, dark wintry evening, and the four of us were clustered around our 14-inch television, watching a group of acrobats forming a human tower on the screen. Just as the last man was about to be thrown into the air, the door to the parlour opened and we heard a drunken grunt. Without thinking, and as one voice, we chorused a loud ‘shush’. As the final acrobat flew through the air, on the point of taking his place at the top of the tower, we all realized who was standing behind us.

‘Tell me to shush, will you? I’ll show you who’s boss in this house.’

Roaring with anger, he lurched over to the television set, picked it up, staggered over to the bay window and hurled it with all his might through the glass on to the street. The noise was horrendous, as fragments rained down on the cobbles outside. Leaping to our feet, we made a bolt for the safety of upstairs. The fact that we all managed to fit through the door at once proved how desperate we were to escape.

As we pounded upstairs, our feet making a loud noise on the brown lino that covered the floor, Mum, attracted by the shouting, dashed out of the kitchen. Wiping her hands on her apron, she cried out, ‘What’s going on? Will someone tell me what’s going on?’ She must have gone into the front parlour and seen the window. My father was still ranting, but perhaps he now realized what he had done, as his voice quietened down, and his anger turned to self-justification.

Slowly, I pulled back the curtains from the window above my bed. I saw that the neighbours were out in force: peering from behind their net curtains or being even bolder and standing on their front steps watching and gossiping.

Mum was out in the street, down on her hands and knees picking up the pieces of the wreckage. I could see the light from the street lamp glinting on the tears streaming down her cheeks. It was typical of our life as a family that for all the good Mum managed to achieve, my father would destroy it in one drunken moment.

My father did a great many unpleasant things regarding my mother, but I believe this was one of the lowest moments of their married life. He knew how proud Mum was of her television. The complete and utter humiliation that he subjected her to has remained with me as clearly as the image of her tears as she knelt in the darkened street.

From an early age, I had a special closeness with Mum and, being the youngest, I accompanied her everywhere while my three older siblings were at school. She was a woman of incredible spirit and courage and, like mothers all over the world, would do anything to protect and provide for her children.

Like so many other kids living in the Liverpool slums, we were often cold, our threadbare clothes providing little or no warmth. In winter we would huddle around the fire in the living room, and when times were particularly hard, Mum would throw anything on it to keep it going – even worn-out old shoes and boots. Mum worked hard as a cleaner and had a good reputation but couldn’t always get work. At those times, even as a small child, I could feel the sense of pure desperation that seemed to enshroud her. Without money, she couldn’t feed us.

I remember, one bitter February morning, Mum was sitting at the small table in the living room, counting the copper coins in her purse. She seemed to be weighing something up very carefully in her head. I must have made a noise as I approached, as she looked up then got to her feet. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We’re going to the Co-Op.’

When we got there she took both my hands in hers and looked me straight in the eye, saying, ‘James, listen to me. I want you to stay right here. Do you understand? Don’t you dare move; I promise I won’t be long.’ She fussed with my coat and hat and wiped my runny nose with her handkerchief.

I didn’t say anything other than, ‘Yes, Mum,’ but I couldn’t understand why she wouldn’t let me go in with her. I stood by the front of the store, looking at the traffic going up and down Smithdown Road and all the people rushing around. I started to feel cold and hungry, and wished Mum would hurry up. I seemed to be standing there forever. Each time the door opened I tried to look inside.

I wasn’t used to being on my own and became very upset, crying with confusion and unable to stop shivering with cold. A lady knelt down in front of me, concern in her voice.

‘What’s up, love?’ she asked.

‘It’s me mum. I want me mum. She’s in there.’

Standing up, the lady took me by the hand and led me inside. It was warm, so I started to feel a bit better, but then, in the middle of the store, the woman demanded, ‘Who does this child belong to?’ in a loud voice, and then asked again.

Everyone looked round, and before long one of the sales assistants said, ‘He must belong to the woman in the office with the policeman and the manager.’

The next moment, one of the staff took my hand and led me into the office. As the door opened, I caught sight of my mum, sitting on a chair crying. I was crying myself as I ran to her. She put her arms around me and picked me up, placing me on her lap and covering my face with kisses.

‘There, there love,’ she said, her voice beginning to soothe me. ‘I’m so sorry. Everything will be all right now we’re together.’

There was a policeman standing next to my mum’s chair. He looked at me sitting on Mum’s lap and asked her, ‘Have you no shame? Theft is a very serious crime, even if it is only a loaf of bread. If I had my way I would be taking you down to the police station right now. You’re very lucky the manager has decided not to prosecute. He says you have never stolen from here before, so he is letting you off scot-free.’At the door, he said, loudly so that everyone could hear, ‘Don’t let me catch you stealing ever again!’, and the manager added, ‘Don’t you ever show your face in here again.’

Mum left the store and immediately turned into the alleyway, heading for home, grasping my hand and willing me to keep up with her. As soon as we were through the back door, she shut it behind us, sighing with relief at being in the safety of her own home.

Then she groaned as the shame of it hit her. ‘Has it come to this?’ she cried out. ‘Having to steal a loaf of bread to feed my children? What in heaven have I done? The neighbours …’

She knew that within ten minutes of our leaving the store everybody from streets around would know what had happened. They would have something new to gossip about, and for once it wouldn’t be my dad.

My poor little mum. She must have felt so mortified knowing she had brought shame to our home. It was almost too much for her to bear. She broke down, weeping for the longest time as I stood there with my arms wrapped around her knees, trying to comfort her.

I didn’t understand much of it then. But it has stayed with me all my life like a bad dream, coming back to haunt me from time to time.

2. The Perfect Couple

It’s only with hindsight that I can fully appreciate how my mother struggled to make ends meet. The electricity would go off on a regular basis because the meter was empty, and Mum’s purse would be just as bare. When this happened, she would head off on the hunt for my father, taking me with her. Maybe it was for moral support, or maybe she hoped that seeing one of his children would shame my father into putting his hand into his pocket.

Going from pub to pub, she’d stand in the doorway with me in her arms, peering through the crowd of men and cigarette smoke. If she spotted her husband she’d gesture frantically, trying to catch his attention. More often than not this would fail, as he’d be too busy enjoying himself with his mates or too drunk to notice, so she would have to venture in, making her way through the mass of bodies until she reached his side, then tapping him gently on the shoulder. His response would vary depending on how much he’d had to drink. Sometimes he’d give her a shilling for the meter and something extra for food; other times, he’d insist she went home, annoyed with her for disturbing his drinking.

Occasionally, he was harder to track down. If Mum couldn’t find him, she’d look for his taxi. Sometimes he’d be on a rank waiting for a fare, but at other times the cab would be empty.

Once, my eldest sister Lesley was with her. After a while they found the cab parked in a dark sidestreet – so dark they couldn’t see if there was anyone in it. Mum tried the doors and found them locked. She and Lesley were about to walk away when the passenger door opened and Dad’s angry voice rang out across the cobbles. ‘What are you doing here?’ he demanded. ‘Are you spying on me?’

As Mum was explaining that she had no money for the electricity meter, she and Lesley moved closer to the taxi. Through the open door they could see a woman in a state of undress sitting in the back of the cab next to my father.

It was Ruby Brown, Mum’s best friend! As young girls and teenagers they’d been almost inseparable, and their friendship had continued throughout the War and after they’d both married. Mum had even asked Ruby to the pub with her and Dad on numerous occasions because she felt sorry for her, with her husband being away at sea a lot of the time.

I can only imagine what my mother must have felt. Mustering as much dignity as possible, she took Lesley by the hand, and turned and walked away.

Mum’s life had changed so much. She walked down the aisle a beautiful young bride looking forward to a future of happiness and love – but it didn’t turn out like that.

Elsie May Turner was nineteen years old and working in her mother’s shop when she first set eyes on my father. Her mother, Mary Louise, was the proud owner of not one but two sweet and tobacco shops on Lodge Lane. Her father, George, worked as a sheet-metal worker for the Gas Board and in his free time helped out in the family business.

Elsie was the sixth of eleven children; and when she was eleven she became very ill with pneumonia and spent a large part of her childhood in a special home for sick children on the coast. Unable to play outdoors, she turned her mind to reading and writing, and being naturally inquisitive and intelligent, by the time she left, she was years ahead of many of her contemporaries. Her mother, realizing how gifted she was, put her to work in the shop, confident she would soon pick up the trade.

Leslie Pearce was born and grew up in the same area as Mum, in a two-up-two-down terrace. He was the youngest of six, by seven years, and his father, a taxi driver, left home when he was very young to set up home with another woman, and raised a second family. When Les was barely eight, his mother died of thrombosis, and he and Joyce, the youngest of his three sisters, were put into an orphanage. Les and Joyce hated it there and Joyce left on her sixteenth birthday, taking Les, now nine, with her, back to the family home. She and her two sisters raised Les, spoiling him outrageously to try to make up for him losing his parents so young.

Leslie’s first job was working for the Liverpool Corporation Highways Department, maintaining the roads, and his work often took him along Lodge Lane. He was sixteen when he first set eyes on Mum. Going into the shop for a packet of cigarettes one day, he saw her, a pretty young girl, petite, with a fabulous smile and warm personality and the most beautiful head of auburn hair. After that day he kept going back, and if the shop was busy he would peer in through the window trying to catch a glimpse of her. Eventually he found the courage to say a few words to her, and a couple of days later asked her out for a date.

Elsie and Les made an attractive couple and started to see a lot of each other, spending most of their time at dance halls. But not long after her twentieth birthday, Elsie found herself pregnant. And in those days, when a young man got a girl ‘in trouble’, he did the ‘right’ thing and married her. Les’s sisters weren’t so keen, because they felt that, at the age of seventeen, he wasn’t much more than a child himself, but the couple did marry, at St Bede’s Parish Church, on 23 August 1939. Within a matter of weeks, Great Britain had declared war on Germany.

After a long and difficult birth, Pamela was born in February 1940. Unfortunately, she died a few hours later. The young couple were devastated. Les was too young and inexperienced to know how to comfort his wife, let alone deal with his own grief. And they had married to give a home to the baby. I’ve often wondered whether he felt cheated of his bachelor years after that, and if that was one of the reasons he shied away from being a father to us later.

Within weeks of Pamela’s death, the ‘Phoney War’ came to an end and troops were mobilized overnight. Les had already joined up and had been posted to RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, where he served as a member of the Catering Corps, and Mum, like so many other women with husbands and loved ones away, just got on with her life. She worked in the family shop until it was destroyed in a bombing raid, then found a job at Freemans, a small department store. After that, she joined the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) and was based at the Royal Liver Building on the city’s waterfront, working in the Communications Centre, located deep in the basement.

Towards the end of 1944, pregnant for the fourth time (she had suffered two miscarriages during the war), Elsie was discharged from the WRNS. And in July 1945, Lesley, her first surviving child, was born, in the front parlour of Grandma Turner’s house. Mum’s joy was immense: for the first time in six long years she was able to hold a beautiful, healthy baby in her arms.

Les returned briefly to England in November 1946, with the result that Barry was born in August of the following year. By this time my father had been demobbed and was at home for the birth.