Lime Street Blues Read online

  Going down the Cavern steps for the first time was probably more momentous than entering Tutankhamun’s tomb, Elaine remarked in an awed voice. They paid the entry fee, signed in, and were met by a bombardment of noise and a curious smell, a mixture of cigarettes, soot, damp, and perspiration. The bare brick walls glistened with moisture.

  They entered what appeared to be a dimly lit railway tunnel, long and narrow with a curved ceiling. Smoke drifted in layers underneath, like a gently moving canopy. They explored, and discovered two more tunnels connected by a series of arches. The first was furnished with rows of seats, mostly occupied, for those who’d come for the music. Another had been set aside for dancing, and the third was packed with people who just appeared to be talking very loudly in an effort to be heard above the tremendous, pounding music.

  ‘Let’s dance,’ Jeannie suggested, unable to keep still another minute – her body seemed to be twitching in rhythm with the beat. The boys, who seemed to know everyone, had disappeared.

  They danced self-consciously at first, hopping from one foot to the other, though quickly got used to the liberated feeling of being able to twist their bodies and wave their arms about without people thinking they were mad. They did this till exhausted, then went to look for a cold drink.

  Lachlan was by the bar talking to a couple of girls. Jeannie was too exhilarated to care. This was turning into the best night of her life. It wasn’t just the Cavern, but the people there. They seemed far more alive and animated than other young people she’d known. Elaine and Benny looked unusually vivacious and she supposed she must do herself. Even the drink, Coca Cola, was different to anything she’d had before; it tasted peppery and tickled her nose.

  Elaine came up with the bright idea of buying a lipstick between them before they came again. ‘We’re the only girls here who aren’t wearing make-up. We’d all suit pink. We’ll come again, won’t we?’ she said anxiously.

  ‘Deffo,’ Benny concurred. ‘This place is the gear. But I couldn’t afford to come more than once a week. I can’t ask Mam for more pocket money. What about you, Jeannie?’

  ‘I dunno.’ Jeannie chewed her lip. ‘I’m not even sure if I’ll be allowed to come again. My mum acted very strangely this morning. She insisted I take these clothes with me to school and get changed at Elaine’s. She said it’d be best if I didn’t come home for tea. I’ve got a feeling Dad doesn’t know I was coming. He doesn’t even know I’ve got slacks. Mum bought them the other day and said I wasn’t to mention it.’

  Elaine said she hoped there wouldn’t be hell to pay when Jeannie got home.

  ‘I hope so too.’ Jeannie would prefer not to think about it. It would only spoil things. ‘Let’s sit and listen to the music for a while.’

  They sat behind Max who had his eyes glued to the small stage where Vince McLoughlin and his Vulcans, three guitarists and a drummer about the same age as himself, were performing ‘Shakin’ All Over’ with wild, intimidating exuberance. The small space was entirely filled with the raw sound and the hoarse voices of the four scruffily dressed young men. Jeannie caught her breath and grabbed the sides of her chair with both hands. The urgent, thumping beat was doing something to her head and her heart. Her lungs were threatening to burst, her feet unable to keep still. She noticed a small, unused piano on the stage, and wished she could play it. At least it would give her fingers something to do.

  The music stopped suddenly and she relaxed and let out a long, slow breath. Leaning forward, she tapped Max on the shoulder. He looked surprised to see her when he turned round. ‘The guitars sound different to yours,’ she said.

  ‘They’re electric, that’s why.’

  The rest of the unreal, never to be forgotten night passed far too quickly. Benny was the first to leave. ‘Mam won’t go to bed till I’m home and she has to be up at five for work in the morning. Next time, perhaps we can come at the weekend and stay as late as we like.’

  Elaine agreed. ‘I’ll be half dead in the morning and we’ve got double science.’

  Jeannie laughed and said she was quite likely to fall asleep during double science, but didn’t care.

  Her mother must have been listening for the van. She was standing in the doorway when, at almost midnight, Ronnie Connors drew up in front of Disraeli Terrace. His three remaining passengers got out. Sean McDowd, who had hardly exchanged a word with any of them all night, didn’t speak, just shrugged his shoulders as he trudged away, which she supposed was his way of saying goodnight.

  ‘Surly bugger,’ Max muttered, but proved just as surly when they went indoors, refusing the offer of a hot drink and going straight to bed.

  ‘He’s in a mood,’ Jeannie announced as she followed her mother into the kitchen.

  ‘Our Max seems to have been in a mood for the last five years. What’s the reason this time?’

  ‘They were talking about it in the van on the way home. Lachlan has decided they have to have electric guitars – all rock ’n’ roll groups have them – and they’re buying Vox amplifiers too. The others are going to club together to buy Max a guitar because he can’t afford it. It makes him feel like a sponger. Poor Max,’ Jeannie said with feeling.

  ‘I’m not surprised he’s in a mood. I’d be too in the same position.’ Her mother looked annoyed. ‘I’m sure we can manage to buy Max a guitar on hire purchase. I’ll have a word with him tomorrow. What about you? Did you enjoy yourself, love?’

  ‘Oh, Mum, it was . . .’ Jeannie searched for words to describe the last few hours. ‘. . . wonderful!’ she gasped. ‘My head’s still buzzing. Where’s Dad?’ She glanced around the kitchen, as if expecting the stern figure of her father to appear out of the pantry or from under the table.

  ‘In bed,’ her mother said lightly. ‘He went ages ago.’

  Jeannie was slowly coming down to earth. She vaguely remembered she’d been expecting a scene, the sort there’d been when Max had started to come home late, an angry, shouting scene. Why was Mum still up, but not Dad? And why did Mum look so calmly cheerful? Perhaps Dad hadn’t minded, after all, when he discovered she’d gone to the Cavern?

  ‘Is everything OK, Mum?’

  ‘Everything’s fine, Jeannie. Now, tell me about tonight, first things first. What’s it like, this Cavern? I wouldn’t mind going there myself one of these days . . .’

  Tom had been having his tea when he’d noticed Jeannie wasn’t present. He was thinking there’d been a time when his children used to run and greet him when he came in from work. Nowadays, he merely got a casual ‘Hello, Dad,’ when they condescended to appear.

  ‘She’s gone to Elaine’s,’ Rose told him. She’d been hoping he’d have finished the meal by the time they had this conversation.

  ‘I suppose she’ll want a lift from the station later,’ he grumbled.

  ‘There’s a lift already arranged. Ronnie Connors is bringing her home in the van.’

  It took a while for the meaning of this to sink in. Rose watched his brow crease and his eyes glaze over as he tried to make sense of the words. Eventually, she took pity on him. ‘She’s gone to the Cavern, Tom. I told her she could. Her friends were going and it didn’t seem fair for her to be left out. She won’t come to any harm, believe me.’

  ‘You told her!’

  ‘Yes, Tom, I did.’ She felt nervous, but not frightened as she’d expected. Her prime feeling was one of impatience. The whole thing was excessively silly. She wanted the argument over and done with in as few words as possible.

  ‘Without discussing it with me first?’

  ‘I don’t recall you discussing it with me before you refused to let her go. Would you like more custard on your pudding?’

  He pushed the dish away and she just caught it before it shot off the end of the table. ‘How dare you, Rose! How dare you go against my wishes!’

  ‘I’m your wife, Tom. I can go against your wishes whenever I please.’ But she should have done it earlier, and done it gradually, she realised when she saw his st
ricken face. It was unfair to spring this on him right out of the blue. She said, gently, ‘Marriage should be a partnership, not a dictatorship.’

  He blinked. ‘Where did you get that from?’

  ‘Out of my own head, Tom. It’s only common sense.’

  ‘How long have you been thinking things like that?’

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ Rose conceded truthfully.

  ‘And you’ve never said anything before?’

  ‘I think you’d have noticed if I had.’ She laughed. It was a mistake. Tom’s face darkened.

  ‘Don’t use that tone of voice with me, my girl,’ he snapped.

  ‘Oh, Tom. I’m not your girl, I’m your wife,’ she reminded him again. ‘You seem to have finished your tea. I’m going to listen to the wireless.’ She wanted to get away from his ridiculously angry face. She’d wash the dishes later. ‘By the way,’ she added, stopping by the door, ‘I went to Ormskirk this afternoon and arranged to buy a television on hire purchase. It’s being delivered the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘You’ll not get an extra penny off me to pay for it.’ He looked triumphant. ‘When it arrives, you’d better tell them to take it back.’

  ‘We’ll see, Tom.’ She’d tell him another time that she’d got a part-time job. He’d had enough shocks for one night. The Post Office needed someone behind the counter five mornings a week. Rose was starting on Monday. She’d always been good with figures, not that Tom had noticed.

  Later, she heard him go into the garden, and shortly afterwards, Gerald came home. He’d joined the scouts, something that clearly met with his father’s approval, as he hadn’t objected.

  ‘What did you do tonight, love?’ she asked.

  ‘Knots. Shall I show you how to do a reef knot?’

  ‘I’d like that, Gerald. You never know when a reef knot might come in handy.’

  Gerald went to bed, shortly followed by Tom when it was barely dark. He didn’t bid her goodnight.

  Rose stayed in the parlour, the wireless turned on low, only half listening to the soft music, the murmuring voices like friends in the night. She watched the moon rise in the dark sky, before getting up to close the curtains and turn on the light, and deciding she felt like a drink.

  The dishes were still unwashed when she went into the kitchen, and she was about to run water in the kettle when she thought about another sort of drink. There was still sherry in the larder from last Christmas. She poured a glass, feeling daring, and took it back to the parlour.

  ‘This is the life,’ she whispered. Come Friday, she’d have a television to watch when she stayed up late – she resolved never to go to bed early again. After she’d paid for the TV, she’d get a washing machine or a fridge. She tried to decide which was the most important, but one seemed just as necessary as the other. When the time came, she’d toss a coin.

  And so Rose passed the time while she listened for the sound of the van bringing her children home. For the first time in her life, she felt like a proper human being. She felt like herself.

  The Merseysiders auditioned for a man named Billy Kidd, who owned a club, the Taj Mahal in Toxteth. He came one night to the Connors’ factory in Kirkby to hear them play amidst the baths, lavatories, and cisterns in the store room.

  ‘Now, remember, lads, no swearing,’ Lachlan said while they waited for Billy to arrive, glancing sternly at Fly Fleming, the main culprit in this department. Lachlan was the undoubted leader of the group, expecting the same dedication from the others as he gave himself. Max, Sean, and Fly were just as anxious to set the world alight with their music and didn’t protest when they rehearsed well into the early hours and all day Sunday, leaving only Saturday night free. Ronnie Connors didn’t say anything, but they suspected his heart wasn’t in it. He did his best, but he was only there because of his father and gave the impression he’d sooner be somewhere else.

  ‘Me, swear?’ Fly’s look of injured innocence would have shattered a dozen hearts. ‘Have youse lot ever heard me swear?’

  ‘Never,’ the others chorused.

  ‘You’re getting me mixed up with some other bugger, Lachlan, me old mate. I don’t hold with bad language, me.’

  ‘I could do with a drink,’ Ronnie complained. ‘Me nerves are in tatters.’

  ‘You know we never drink before we play,’ Lachlan told him.

  ‘This group has a strictly no drinking, no swearing policy,’ Fly said in a deep, sepulchral voice. ‘What about girls, Lachlan? Can we at least look at them?’

  ‘You can look, but don’t touch.’ Lachlan grinned.

  ‘We’d have had more fun joining a seminary,’ Max complained.

  ‘Perhaps we should change our name to something religious,’ suggested Fly. ‘The Boppin’ Bishops, or the Holy Ghosts.’

  Even Sean, who rarely joined in the banter, choked over this remark.

  ‘The Jumpin’ Jesuits,’ Fly continued. ‘Hey! What about the Dixie Deans?’

  ‘You’re getting boring, Fly,’ Lachlan snapped. They heard a car draw up outside. ‘Billy Kidd’s arrived. Come on, lads, shoulders back. This is it.’ He went to open the door.

  ‘Shoulders back!’ Fly hooted. ‘He’ll have us doing PT next. We’d have had even more fun if we’d joined the fuckin’ Army.’

  Billy Kidd didn’t want his club left behind when the new phenomenon, rock ’n’ roll, took hold, which he was convinced it would one day soon. These five young lads were the best he’d heard so far. The keyboard player wasn’t so hot, but the two tall guitarists played and sang as if inspired, easily making up for the weak link. He booked them to appear every Wednesday at the Taj Mahal for the next six weeks. The fee he offered was derisory, but the group were too busy congratulating each other – it involved a great deal of punching, slapping, and shoving – to notice. Either that, or they didn’t care. Billy reckoned he could have got them for nothing and wished he hadn’t mentioned money at all.

  Without telling a soul except his sister, Max left school and got a job as a clerk in Lachlan’s factory. His studies were getting in the way of music, he explained. The teachers kept expecting essays and stuff, and he couldn’t spare the time.

  For two weeks, he and Jeannie had left the house together, but instead of getting off at Orrell Park, Max went on to Sandhills Station, where he changed his blazer for a sports jacket and went to work instead of school.

  ‘You’ll have to tell Dad soon,’ Jeannie warned. ‘The longer you leave it, the worse it’ll be.’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ Max replied laconically. ‘If Dad finds out tomorrow, it won’t be any worse than if he’d found out last week. Anyway, there’s nothing he can do except rant and rave, and since Mum got a job and bought a television, he’s lost some of his steam. I suspect there’s been a major power shift.’ He laughed, as if he thought it extremely funny.

  Jeannie didn’t laugh. She had also noticed the way her mother had suddenly started to take decisions, while her father seemed to shrink into the background. She felt sorry for him, and also guilty that the situation could possibly be her fault for going to the Cavern when it had been expressly forbidden. What’s more, she’d been every week since, which only made her feel more guilty, but not guilty enough to stop.

  The truth about Max emerged when Tom Flowers received a letter from the Headmaster of Orrell Park Grammar wanting to know if Max was ill.

  ‘Perhaps you could do me the courtesy,’ the Headmaster wrote stiffly, ‘of letting me know the reason for your son’s long absence from school . . .’

  ‘What the hell’s going on?’ Tom roared at his wife, but Rose was equally mystified and just as annoyed. It was left to Jeannie to tell them what Max had done. Rose ran to fetch a glass of water when Tom’s face turned so red he looked about to explode.

  His anger was further inflamed when Max didn’t come home that night. ‘What is this, a lodging house?’ he demanded of his wife the next morning.

  Rose’s answer only made him angrier still. ‘We need a telepho
ne, Tom. Max would have been able to tell us why he couldn’t come home if we had a phone. The van might have had a puncture and you could have picked him up. He probably spent the night at the Baileys’. Do calm down, dear. It’s not the end of the world.’

  ‘What? That he didn’t come home or that he left school without permission?’ Tom stomped out of the house. A few minutes later, Rose saw him wobbling along the road on his bike. If he wasn’t careful, he’d have a heart attack, she thought worriedly.

  She would have much preferred it if Max had stayed at school and got his A levels, then put his mind to other things. But young people were only concerned with the here and now. The future was the last of their worries.

  There was, of course, the inevitable row when Tom and Max came face to face, but Tom’s heart wasn’t in it. No one took notice of him any more. In vain did Rose lecture him on the need to change to accommodate their growing children. ‘We can’t treat them like babies for ever, Tom. Max is almost an adult, old enough to fight for his country or get married. He can’t be forced to stay at school if he doesn’t want to.’

  Tom couldn’t see why not. He was Max’s father and, until he was dead or had lost his reason, what he said should be law, as it had been with his own father. What’s more, he didn’t take kindly to being lectured by a woman who, in his eyes, wasn’t much more than a child herself. These days, Rose was coming out with all sorts of claptrap. He suspected she got it off that damn television, which he refused to watch. He wasn’t even prepared to sit in the same room when it was on, and as no one seemed prepared to accommodate him and turn it off, Tom was left to feel that there was no place for him in his own home with his own family.

  Chapter 6

  ‘Is that coat warm enough, luv?’

  ‘It’s fine, Mam.’ The brown jacket was much too thin for December. Once outside, the cold wind would whip right through it, but if Benny so much as hinted at this, a warm coat would be acquired from a cheque shop in a matter of days and extra hours of cleaning would have to be done to pay for it.