Lime Street Blues Page 17

  ‘How would you know?’

  He didn’t know. How could he? He mumbled something incomprehensible and went to bed. Rose curled herself up in a chair, revelling in the solitude and the silence. Her mysterious, imaginary lover now had a face, and the face was that of Alex Connors.

  Tom was still angry with Rose next day, but he’d believed her when she claimed to have met someone called Clara Baker in Liverpool. Hard as he tried, he couldn’t remember the woman who’d left Ailsham with her husband to live in Hoylake. He was worried what sort of person she was. Rose had had little experience of the world and the woman might be a bad influence.

  ‘Do you recall a Clara Baker who used to be in the Women’s Institute?’ he asked Mrs Denning when he went for his midday meal.

  ‘Yes, I do, Tom. Nice young woman, very pretty, as I recall. Wasn’t she friendly with your Rose? She and her husband went to live in Hoylake.’

  ‘I can’t quite bring her to mind.’

  ‘She walked with a slight limp. I understand she’d had polio as a child.’

  ‘Ah, I remember now. Yes, she did seem nice.’ He felt relieved and was about to mention that Rose had bumped into Clara Baker the day before, but Mrs Denning got in first. ‘It was terribly sad that she died.’

  ‘Who died?’

  ‘Why, Clara Baker, of course. She died in childbirth. Oh, it must have been a good five years back. It’s not the sort of thing that happens much nowadays, but she was always in poor health. Are you all right, Tom? You’ve gone awfully pale.’

  Chapter 8

  There’d been a time when Liverpool was the richest city in the country outside London and its docks the second biggest in Europe. It had supplied the world with an abundance of fine actors and comedians, and its people were famous for their wit and good humour. But now Liverpool was on the verge of becoming famous for something else – rock ’n’ roll.

  The Cavern was already a beacon for everyone who wanted to listen to beat live and they came from all over the British Isles. The Merseysiders played regularly, always to an enthusiastic crowd, though they still appeared every Friday at the Taj Mahal. For the first time, Lachlan regretted signing a contract with Billy Kidd when the Beatles acquired a young, enterprising manager, Brian Epstein, who put the four untidy young men through a startling transformation. They had their hair cut, wore suits, tidied up their act, and emerged more charismatic than they’d been before.

  ‘Billy hasn’t a clue about presentation or promotion,’ Lachlan complained to the others.

  They all agreed that Billy wasn’t up to handling a rock ’n’ roll group. He was lazy, had no imagination, and wouldn’t know how to get them on the wireless, as Brian Epstein had done with the Beatles. They also agreed, ruefully, that it was a bit late to realise that now.

  In May, a Granada television crew descended on the city to make a programme, Outside the Cavern, about the other Liverpool beat clubs. An excited Billy broke the news that the Taj Mahal would be included and the Merseysiders, one of the most popular local groups, would play on the night.

  When Kevin McDowd heard, he immediately paid Billy Kidd a visit.

  ‘Not you again!’ Billy groaned when Kevin captured him in the bar of the Taj Mahal, his head buried in the Racing Times. ‘If you’ve come about your bloody girl group, then you’ve had it. They’re not going on and that’s final. Me club would become a laughing stock.’

  Kevin glanced at the newspaper. ‘Y’know, Billy, I’d never have taken you for a gambling man. It requires nerve and more than a bit of courage to have a wee flutter on the horsies now’n again.’

  ‘I’ve got nerve, I’ve got courage,’ Billy blustered. ‘I have a flutter most days, not a wee one, either.’

  ‘In that case, I bet you twenty-five quid that the Flower Girls won’t raise even the suggestion of a giggle if they play at your lovely club.’ Kevin’s face almost cracked in two as he gave his most charming, ruthlessly persuasive smile. ‘And this is a wager you can’t lose, Billy, because if some rude, heartless soul dares to take a breath that sounds remotely like a titter, then you’ll be up twenty-five quid. And if no one does? Well, I won’t want a penny off you. So, you see, Billy, you can’t lose, and it shows how much confidence I have in my four wee girls.’

  Billy considered this. The mad Irishman was right. He couldn’t lose. He was getting an act for free, and all he had to do was persuade one of his regulars to emit a little laugh during the girls’ performance and he would be in receipt of twenty-five smackeroos. The club’s reputation wouldn’t be harmed by a duff act. There’d been duff acts before, all clubs had them occasionally, including the Cavern.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘How about a week on Monday?’

  ‘That won’t do, Billy boy. I’d prefer me wee girls went on two weeks on Tuesday.’

  ‘But that’s the night the television’s coming!’

  ‘I know that, Billy, but they’re coming for the lads, not the girls. What difference will it make?’

  Billy gnawed his fat lips. ‘Make it fifty, and you can come two weeks Tuesday.’

  ‘Done!’ If someone laughed, and Kevin didn’t doubt Billy would make sure someone did, he didn’t have fifty bob, let alone fifty quid, to settle the bet. But he’d cross that bridge when he came to it.

  The Flower Girls worked themselves up into a state of desperate hysteria when he informed them they had a gig at last, even Rita, usually so calm about everything.

  ‘And isn’t it what we’ve been working towards all these last months?’ Kevin said impatiently.

  ‘Yes, but the television will be there,’ Marcia cried.

  ‘Don’t worry, they won’t be interested in youse lot,’ Kevin lied. They would if he had anything to do with it.

  The Merseysiders couldn’t afford to buy suits, but on the night Granada television came to the Taj Mahal, they had their hair cut and wore black trousers and identical dark blue shirts. At the start of the evening, they hung around at the back of the room beside the camera that had been set up earlier – the Granada guys were in the bar having a drink. Normally, they too would have waited in the bar until the first act had finished, but they wouldn’t have missed tonight’s first act for anything.

  Apart from Sean, whose trust in his father’s judgement was implicit, the others had little faith that the Flower Girls would do well, if only because they were girls. Rock ’n’ roll and women didn’t go together.

  ‘The world isn’t ready for this yet,’ Lachlan muttered. He was worried for Jeannie, who would be devastated if she made a show of herself. He wasn’t bothered for his sister. Marcia made a show of herself almost every day.

  ‘The world never will be.’ Max chewed his nails and wished Kevin McDowd hadn’t come back from wherever he’d been and involved Jeannie in a stupid group that was bound to fail.

  Fly Fleming expressed the wish he would faint. ‘If I do, just leave me on the floor until it’s all over.’

  Others in the audience were on tenterhooks as they waited for the girls to appear; Elaine, a few pupils from Orrell Park Grammar, Alex Connors, and Marcia’s boyfriend, Graham, who rather hoped they’d be dead hopeless and Marcia would at last agree to marry him. All the parents, apart from Kevin McDowd, had been strictly banned and left to worry at home.

  The atmosphere in the Taj Mahal was already electric with excitement when the lights went out, and for a while the room was in total darkness, until the rotund figure of Billy Kidd appeared under a single spotlight. Tonight, Billy announced, his club, not for the first time, was at the forefront of the entertainment scene. Not only was there a television camera present, but the audience was in for a rare treat. ‘One of these days you’ll tell your grandkids you were there the night this group first played in public. Ladies and gentlemen . . .’ He paused dramatically. ‘. . . the Flower Girls.’

  The spotlight went out and from the darkness came the sound of a piano, just single notes, playing the first lines of an Elvis Presley number, ‘Don
’t Be Cruel’.

  Then the piano stopped and the lights over the stage came on. For a few seconds, the Flower Girls, in their dazzling red frocks, remained perfectly still; Rita centre stage, holding her guitar, Benny and Marcia behind, heads bent, legs slightly apart, and Jeannie at the side poised over the piano. Then all four looked up, smiled, and the stage exploded into sound.

  ‘Don’t be cruel, to the one you love,’ Rita sang, while Jeannie’s hands danced over the keys, and the other girls moved together with precise, hypnotic symmetry.

  The audience, accustomed to groups being introduced and stumbling in full view on to the stage, tripping over wires, fiddling with their instruments while they talked amongst themselves before deigning to play a note, were stunned by this display of naked professionalism. This was show business for real. They gasped and burst into spontaneous applause.

  That’ll do me wee girls a load of good, thought Kevin McDowd, watching from the back. They’d all been nervous, but the little show of appreciation would give them the confidence they needed. He glanced sideways. The Merseysiders, even Sean, looked pole-axed, their mouths hanging open in surprise. He hoped Billy, wherever he was, looked the same, and realised that, so far, not a single soul had laughed.

  Kevin waited until the girls had delivered another number, ‘Here Comes Summer’, and were halfway through the next, before making his way upstairs to the bar, where the only occupants were the barman and the two boyos from Granada, one young and red-haired, the other in his forties.

  He bought a box of matches and was on the point of leaving, when he stopped, his face a mask of astonishment that only his wife would have recognised was faked. ‘Aren’t you the fellas from the television?’

  The younger man nodded. ‘I’m the reporter, Ricky Perry. That’s George, he’s camera.’

  Kevin shook his head in a mixture of sadness and bemusement. He was dealing with fools, the look said. ‘Don’t you realise history’s being made downstairs?’

  ‘I don’t get you, mate,’ said George.

  ‘You should be down there, recording it for posterity.’

  ‘Recording what?’ demanded Ricky Perry.

  ‘The debut performance of the first all-girl rock’n’ roll group in the country, that’s what. The press is there, two of ’em, taking notes. I tell you what, fellas, you’ll kick yourselves for the rest of your lives if you don’t get them girls on film.’

  ‘What are they called?’ Ricky got out his notebook.

  ‘The Flower Girls. Anyroad, I’d better be getting back. I only came for these.’ He held up the matches. ‘I don’t want to miss another minute.’

  Downstairs again, Kevin threw the matches away and held his breath. Had the boyos swallowed the hook? His girls had done another number for the spellbound audience when the two men strolled in during a rousing version of ‘Be Bop a Lula’. A few minutes later, Ricky Perry was scribbling madly in his notebook and the camera was rolling.

  The Flower Girls were being filmed and Kevin had no doubt that some discriminating, far-sighted editor would make sure there’d be a few clips of their performance when the programme was aired, though no one seemed to know when that would be.

  After the interval, it was the turn of the Merseysiders. The lads played for all their worth and congratulated themselves afterwards. They also had no doubts that their performance would be noticed and stardom was tantalisingly close.

  Over the next few weeks, numerous families throughout Liverpool scanned the TV Times the minute it came out in the hope that Outside the Cavern would be shown that week, but found themselves sadly disappointed.

  The Flower Girls received a glowing write up in the Liverpool Echo but, although Kevin toured the local clubs, waving the review, not a single gig was forthcoming. Even Billy Kidd refused to give the group another booking. He was more than a little annoyed with Kevin McDowd. In some way, he wasn’t quite sure how, he’d been outsmarted and done out of fifty quid.

  ‘But they were bloody phenomenal,’ Kevin screamed. ‘The audience loved them. You’re an eejit, Billy.’

  ‘They’re a one-off act,’ Billy maintained stiffly. ‘A novelty. No one’d come to see them a second time. One performance and they’ve lost their surprise value.’

  ‘The only surprise is women that can play rock ’n’ roll as well as men.’

  In June, Jeannie and Benny took their O levels and a Careers Officer came to the school to discuss what they intended doing with their lives. They were interviewed separately.

  ‘I’m going into show business,’ Benny announced when her turn came.

  The smartly dressed woman smiled kindly. ‘It’s what many young people want to do, but it’s not a very secure career, unless you become a star.’

  Benny proudly tossed her head. ‘I already belong to a group.’

  ‘Really! Does it pay well?’

  ‘Well, no.’ The group had cost more than it had made, a simple deduction, because it hadn’t made a penny. Sean had bought Rita her guitar, Jeannie had been given the piano, the red, sequinned dresses had been hired and returned to the costumier the next day.

  ‘Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a second career in reserve,’ the woman suggested tactfully. ‘Something you can fall back on if things don’t go as planned.’

  Benny sighed. Like all the Flower Girls, she’d been sadly disappointed by the lack of response following their performance at the Taj Mahal where they seemed to do so well. The audience had shouted for more and everyone had said they were fantastic.

  ‘That’s showbiz, kids,’ Kevin had said only the other day. ‘It’s a case of one step forward and two steps back. You’ll have to learn to get used to it.’

  The trouble was, Benny couldn’t afford the time. In a few weeks, she would be leaving school and be obliged to start work. It was the moment her mother had worked towards over the last five years. Mam was due for a rest from her never-ending toil. Working wouldn’t prevent Benny from staying with the group, but Kevin often spoke of the day when she and Jeannie left school and he could look for gigs in other places, even London. She couldn’t ask for days off from a job she’d only just started. It was different for Rita, who could easily get another waitressing job, and Marcia never worked anywhere for more than five minutes. Jeannie had no idea what she was going to do.

  ‘Me mother’s always wanted me to work for the Civil Service,’ Benny said listlessly.

  ‘I can arrange for you to sit the exam. I’ll submit your name, shall I?’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  They still rehearsed regularly. Kevin maintained they had to keep fresh, something might turn up any minute, but the spark had gone and even Kevin was beginning to look disheartened. One Sunday afternoon, Marcia didn’t come and sent a blunt message, saying she had more important things to do. It was the first time all four girls hadn’t turned up.

  July came and Jeannie and Benny left school. Benny had already taken the Civil Service exam and passed – she wasn’t sure whether to be glad or sorry. She was offered a job as a clerk with the Inland Revenue in Water Street, with the agreement she have one afternoon a week off to learn shorthand and typing.

  ‘It means extra money when I get the qualifications,’ she told her ecstatic mother. At least someone’s dreams had come true, she thought despondently.

  Jeannie’s long-term future had already been decided. As soon as the Merseysiders achieved success, she and Lachlan would get married. It was just a matter of filling in time until the longed-for and inevitable day arrived. In September, she was commencing a six-month commercial course.

  During the summer holiday, she met Elaine most days. If it was raining, they went to the pictures, or New Brighton or Southport if it was fine. The nights Lachlan wasn’t playing, he and Jeannie would shut themselves in Dr Bailey’s waiting room, or Lachlan would come to Ailsham and they’d go for a walk through the village that always looked especially lovely because she was linking his arm.

  The
O level results arrived. Elaine had achieved six A grades, Jeannie a B and four C’s, little better than Benny who got five C’s, and should have been thrilled to bits, but was the opposite when they met her on Friday in the Taj Mahal.

  ‘I would have been pleased, once, but now I don’t care any more,’ Benny said bitterly. ‘Me job’s as dull as ditchwater. I’m so bored, I ache all over. I can’t stop thinking about the Flower Girls, how different it would have been if . . .’ She shrugged, unable to go on. Her eyes were as bitter as her voice.

  ‘We’re all a bit fed up about it,’ Jeannie said.

  ‘I’m more than a bit. I feel like killing meself, if you must know. You’ve got Lachlan, so what do you care? Marcia’s got Graham, and Rita can sing anywhere. It’s not over for her, but it is for me.’ She got up abruptly. ‘I’m going home. I don’t want to see any of you ever again.’

  ‘Where are we now?’ Rose whispered.

  ‘Paris,’ Alex said in her ear. ‘We’re on the banks of the Seine and there’s an orchestra playing ’specially for us.’

  ‘Is it light or dark?’

  ‘Dark. The moon’s a little yellow curve, like a slice of lemon.’

  ‘Are there any stars?’

  ‘Millions,’ said Alex. ‘Millions and millions of stars. If you close your eyes, you can see them.’

  ‘My eyes are closed and I can already see them. I can see everything, even us.’

  ‘What are we doing?’

  ‘Just dancing.’

  ‘Not kissing?’

  Rose, eyes still closed, shook her head.

  ‘Well, we are now!’ His lips came down on hers, hard and passionate, demanding. They stopped dancing and everything inside her body seemed to melt as she kissed him back, then collapsed against him, helpless with desire. He lifted her up and carried her over to the bed in a very ordinary Liverpool hotel room and they made love. On the rather crackly wireless, the Everly Brothers were singing ‘All I Have to Do is Dream’.

  ‘Is this just a game too?’ Rose asked when they’d finished. Now her body felt as light as air, completely empty. They lay flat on their backs, not touching, exhausted.