The Seven Streets of Liverpool Read Online Free PDF Page B

returned most frequently. It meant that when he was on leave they could spend more time together.
    Lena was a shy person who didn’t make friends easily. She willingly told Aggie her entire life story in the hope that she would pass it around and people would come and befriend her. It was Aggie who told her about Brenda Mahon being a dressmaker, and Lena decided to approach her and order two frocks, a winter one and a summer one. It was a good way of becoming part of the street.
    More than anything she wanted to get to know the woman with the new baby who she’d noticed passing her flat, the infant hardly to be seen beneath its mountain of bedding. She was hoping the woman would become a friend and let her hold her new son or daughter. A baby – several babies, in fact – was what Lena wanted more than anything else in the world, but despite having been married to Maurice for ten whole years, there’d been no sign of her falling pregnant.

    Tom Chance was still living with the Tuttys. He had got a job as a barman in a pub on Marsh Lane and handed over ten bob a week to Freda for his keep. He’d offered it to Gladys first, and Freda had to tell him that it was she rather than her mother who was in charge of the household finances.
    ‘I don’t want her tempted into buying gin,’ she told Tom, now officially their lodger. A single bed and an extremely narrow chest of drawers had been bought second-hand and installed in the box room. Brenda Mahon had been called upon to make curtains.
    ‘I’ll have the place wallpapered when the weather gets warmer,’ Freda promised.
    Tom nodded gravely. He was the perfect lodger, never making a noise or a nuisance of himself in any shape or form. And he helped prepare the meals. He seemed to know ways of making the food more tasty, like mashing the potatoes and turning them into little cakes to roast in the oven, and adding a pinch of curry power which he bought from somewhere to the gravy.
    At school, Freda thought about him during boring lessons like science and needlework. She had a feeling she was falling in love with Tom Chance. If he was still around when she was sixteen, she made up her mind she would marry him.

    In February, Calum Reilly came home from sea with six days’ leave ahead of him. For the first two, he slept solidly, waking occasionally to kiss his children, introduce himself several times to his new daughter and make love to his wife. They both realised that it wouldn’t be such a good idea for Sheila to fall for another baby so soon after the last, so they reluctantly took precautions. Neither liked the idea of him having to withdraw at the very last minute, but it had to be done.
    ‘Seven children is enough for any man, never mind the woman,’ Cal said gruffly. ‘And you lost one, didn’t you, luv? That would’ve made eight.’
    ‘I wouldn’t mind eighteen,’ Sheila said wistfully and not all that truthfully. The new baby, Mollie – called after Sheila’s mother – was wearing her out. She’d quite like to rest for a year or so before starting again.

    A few days later, Lena Newton was seated by the table nursing the new baby, now six weeks old, and marvelling at how perfect she was. It had turned out to be easy to make friends. Brenda, the dressmaker, had mentioned her best friend Sheila’s new baby, Lena had asked if she could see her, and Brenda had taken her to the Reillys’ there and then. ‘Sheila loves visitors,’ she said.
    Calum Reilly was still there and actually remembered coming across Maurice Newton, Lena’s husband, on a ship once.
    ‘He joined when he was eighteen,’ Lena told Calum.
    ‘So did I.’ Calum smiled. ‘It’s a small world, the merchant navy.’
    His children were crawling all over him, making the most of him before he went away again. Sheila was watching them, her eyes bright with happiness. Lena looked down at the tiny baby in her arms and thought how perfect their lives were. When next Maurice came home,