The Seven Streets of Liverpool Read Online Free PDF Page A

less often.
    ‘I’m sorry, darling, but it’s seeing Nicky every week that keeps me going,’ he’d said coldly.
    Eileen finished the cocoa, took the cup into the kitchen to wash, then went upstairs. As usual, she climbed carefully into bed so as not to disturb Nick, though she knew darn well he was wide awake.

    Next morning after breakfast, she and Nicky went with him to Kirkby station. She put the little boy in his big pram; although nowadays she mainly used his pushchair, this way Nick could put his suitcase on the pram, saving him from carrying it.
    They walked down the slope to the platform. Their conversation on the way had been stilted. Eileen couldn’t think of anything to say, and she assumed Nick couldn’t either. She felt horribly relieved when she saw the white smoke of the train as it approached. Then horribly sick as it got nearer and she knew that she wouldn’t see him again for another five or six lonely days.
    Having him home was an ordeal, but seeing him leave was enough to break her heart.

Chapter 2
    January 1943
    There were thousands and thousands of streets similar to Pearl Street in the cities, towns and villages of Great Britain, yet each was unique in its own special way. It wasn’t just the architecture but the inhabitants that distinguished them from each other.
    Pearl Street had twenty-three terraced properties on each side, the front doors leading directly on to the pavement. Each small back yard housed a lavatory and a washhouse. Some of the washhouses had been turned into basic bathrooms, tool sheds, workshops or pigeon lofts.
    About halfway down the street, the row of houses on both sides was interrupted by a narrow entry that led to the neighbouring streets as well as to behind the back yards where dustbins were left to be emptied by corporation workmen. These narrow, squalid passages were used by innocent courting couples, as well as prostitutes and their clients. They were also the place where someone might be taken for a good beating, and were occasionally the scene of a murder – this had definitely been the case in some of the more violent parts of Liverpool.
    There was one thing in particular that made Pearl Street and the streets nearby differ from most others, and that was the twenty-foot-high wall at one end, behind which electric trains ran to Liverpool one way and Southport the other, turning the streets into cul-de-sacs. A piece of chalk could magically turn the ugly wall into goalposts or a set of wickets. Girls could play two-balls against it, or even three-balls if they were skilful enough.
    Until recently, most of the residents had lived in the street their entire married lives, had even been born there, but since September 1939, when the war began, people came and went by the minute, or so it seemed to the more permanent residents.
    Eileen Costello, for example, who was now Eileen Stephens and had lived in number 16, had met a chap from Greece who’d joined the air force and had gone to live in Melling. Eileen’s first husband, Francis Costello, had been killed in the raids along with their little boy, Tony. Some people thought that Eileen still hadn’t got over losing Tony. Eileen’s sister Sheila and her kids had moved into the house when number 19 had been bombed.
    And Miss Brazier from number 10, a real sour old maid, had gone mad all of a sudden. Throwing caution as well as her old maid’s clothes to the wind, she’d dyed her hair blonde, joined the army and been transferred to Scotland. Months later, it was rumoured she had married a sergeant.
    Just before the war began, Mary and Joey Flaherty and their kids had gone to live in Canada, and later the Evanses had moved to Wales to live with relatives. Dear old Mr Singerman from number 3 had lost his life in one of the worst of the raids. His daughter Ruth and her husband had been living in his old house ever since. The war had made a widow of Jessie Fleming, but she’d since married a Yank with a funny