Lime Street Blues Read Online Free PDF Page B

enjoyable, but this was going to be one of the best.
    Her elder brother, Max, came into the garden, looking cross. He threw his royal blue blazer, his satchel, and then himself on to the grass. ‘Bloody teachers!’ he groaned.
    ‘Max!’ his mother gasped.
    ‘They damn well are. Well, some are.’
    ‘What did you do wrong?’ enquired Jeannie.
    ‘Nothing.’ Max’s tone was hurt. ‘Not a damn, bloody thing, yet I still got the strap.’
    ‘I’m sure you must have done something to deserve it, son.’
    ‘You always say that,’ Max said hotly. ‘You and Dad are never on my side. It so happens that, in the dinner hour, some lousy idiot saw two grammar school boys smoking in Orrell cemetery and reported them to the Head. When they refused to own up, Mr Francis decided to punish everyone who’d been out. Me andChris Beatty only went to buy lolly ices and ended up getting walloped.’
    ‘That seems awfully unfair, Mum.’ Jeannie was anxious that the happy atmosphere not be spoilt. The normally easy-going, if excitable, Max had become quite tetchy lately. He was fourteen, a handsome boy, proud of his good looks, but worried he was growing no taller, while the other boys in his class were shooting skywards. Far more worrying for Jeannie was that he had begun to have violent arguments with their father, whose word until then had been law. Max was named after Colonel Max Corbett, their father’s employer and best friend.
    ‘Where’s your cap?’ Rose enquired.
    ‘In my pocket.’
    ‘And your tie?’
    ‘In the other pocket.’
    ‘Would you like a strawberry? And there’s lemonade in the larder.’
    Jeannie got to her feet. ‘I’ll get the lemonade.’
    ‘Ta, sis.’
    Max came into the kitchen with her, claiming he was hungry. He helped himself to two of the fairy cakes that were for tomorrow’s fête. ‘Where’s our Gerald?’ he asked with his mouth full.
    ‘Gone looking for frog spawn in Holly Brook.’
    ‘Lucky sod. I wish I were eight again. One thing I’d never do is pass the bloody eleven-plus. If I’d failed, I’d have gone to an ordinary school like every other boy in Ailsham. I’d be learning useful things, like woodwork, not stupid Latin.’
    ‘I quite hope I pass the eleven-plus.’ Jeannie had sat the exam a few weeks before.
    ‘Then you must be mad.’
    Gerald arrived with a jam jar full of frog spawn, whichhe emptied into the garden pond. Rose came indoors to prepare vegetables for the tea; home-grown potatoes, runner beans, and carrots. She turned on the oven to heat up a steak and kidney pie she’d made earlier. Jeannie stayed to help, while Max went into the parlour to do his homework, and Gerald disappeared into the lavatory with that week’s
Beano
.
    On Fridays, Rose always waited for Tom to come home so the family could have tea together. At exactly ten past six, the latch clicked on the gate, and Jeannie looked up to see the tall figure of Tom Flowers wheel his bike into the shed.
    Seconds later, he came into the kitchen, his darkly sunburnt face moist with perspiration, clasped his wife in his broad arms, and kissed her. It was a full minute before he noticed Jeannie. ‘Hello, luv.’ He chucked her under the chin. ‘Shouldn’t you have changed out of that frock by now?’
    ‘I was just about to, Dad. I’ve been helping Mum.’
    ‘And have you done your piano practice yet?’
    ‘I’ll do it later,’ Jeannie said patiently. She liked playing the piano, practising regularly every day, and couldn’t understand why people found it necessary to remind her.
    ‘Where are the lads?’
    ‘Around somewhere. Jeannie, set the table, there’s a good girl. Tea will be ready in a minute.’
    Jeannie threw a yellow and white check cloth over the big pine table, and began to put out the knives, forks, and placemats with a hunting scene that Dad had bought her mother last Christmas, along with a jug of cream and a bowl of cold stewed apple for afters. She quickly changed her school