Darkest Before Dawn

Table of Contents

Katie Flynn has lived for many years in the north-west. A compulsive writer, she started with short stories and articles and many of her early stories were broadcast on Radio Mersey. She decided to write her Liverpool series after hearing the reminiscences of family members about life in the city in the early years of the twentieth century. She also writes as Judith Saxton. For the past few years, she has had to cope with ME but has continued to write, albeit more slowly.

A Liverpool Lass

The Girl From Penny Lane

Liverpool Taffy

The Mersey Girls

Strawberry Fields

Rainbow's End

Rose of Tralee

No Silver Spoon

Polly's Angel

The Girl from Seaforth Sands

The Liverpool Rose

Poor Little Rich Girl

The Bad Penny

Down Daisy Street

A Kiss and a Promise

Two Penn'orth of Sky

A Long and Lonely Road

The Cuckoo Child

This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form (including any digital form) other than this in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Epub ISBN: 9781446411162

Version 1.0

  

Published by Arrow Books in 2005

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Copyright © Katie Flynn 2005

The right of Katie Flynn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

This novel is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author's imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

First published in the United Kingdom in 2005 by William Heinemann

Arrow Books

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Random House (Pty) Limited

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Houghton, 2198, South Africa

The Random House Group Limited Reg. No. 954009

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 0 09 948697 0

For Melvine Holland with many thanks for your help and constant cheerfulness . . . and for having such a wonderful family!

Acknowledgements

First and foremost, grateful thanks to David Holland, who gave me the idea for this book and explained the mysteries of signalling on the railways, and to Brian Holland, who told me all about the Settle to Carlisle line. Also, many thanks to Fred Seiker, whose book
Lest We Forget
is invaluable to anyone investigating the infamous Thai–Burma Railway in WWII.

Chapter One

Autumn 1938

It was a fine day. The pale September sunshine made the streets of Liverpool look almost beautiful, but Seraphina Todd, leaning over the Houghton bridge and gazing into the canal, thought wistfully that not even the sunshine, or the gentle warmth of the day, could reconcile her or her younger sisters to living in this great sprawling city.

They had been here now for three months, inhabiting a dreary flat above the grocery store in which her mother worked. At first, the flat had seemed large to them, used as they were to the narrow confines of a canal barge, but when the family had lived aboard the
Mary Jane
they had spent most of their time out of doors; someone had had to lead old Gemma, a mighty Percheron mare, when it came to crossing bridges or negotiating a path pitted with water-filled puddles, or made treacherous by builders' rubble, illegally dumped on the towpath.

Glancing sideways, Seraphina saw that her sisters were gazing as wistfully down at the canal as she was herself. Evie, the baby of the family at ten years old, looked as though she might burst into tears at any moment. Seraphina felt pity well up within her. Evie was a tough and feisty child, not given to tears; she was not given to regrets for that matter. Seraphina knew her youngest sister hated living in the city and longed for the freedom she had once enjoyed, but she also knew that Evie was unlikely to confess to such feelings. Usually, she tightened her mouth and made the best of things; it was only rarely that her feelings were allowed to appear.

Seraphina was about to put a comforting arm round her when Evie, sensing that she was being watched, stuck a grimy forefinger up her nose and began to forage about purposefully. Seraphina hated nose-picking and leaned forward to slap Evie's hand down instead, but she was not quick enough. Evie dodged and ran behind Angela, pulling a face at her eldest sister once she was safely out of reach and remarking as she did so: ‘Nyah, nyah! Got you goin' then, didn't I, Fee?'

Seraphina smiled reluctantly. ‘You're a dirty little beast,' she said reprovingly. ‘Why can't you use the handkerchief our ma gave you, like a Christian? If Dad knew the way you behaved . . .'

‘Well he don't; and he won't 'cos you're no tale-clat, Fee,' Evie said. She gave a little skip and tugged at Angela's skirt. ‘Oh, don't I wish we were aboard the old
Mary Jane
, heading for the Pennines!'

Angela turned her large, dreamy blue eyes on her little sister. ‘The truth is, queen, that we all miss the canal horribly, even Ma and Pa,' she said gently. ‘But Pa was right, you know; living and working on the canal, we were never in one place long enough for us girls to get work. Fee here is eighteen and I'll be fifteen in a few weeks. And it weren't just work, either. Pa said we never met anyone for long enough to get to know 'em, an' though he liked canal folk well enough, same as we all did, he says the future for bargees ain't what it was, now the railways an' big lorries shift goods so much quicker than we could. Because we're so much slower, the pay's a deal poorer, and though she never complained Ma was findin' it more 'n' more difficult to feed and clothe all of us. But now, with the
Mary Jane
and both the butty boats let out to Jimmy and Hetty Figgins and with Ma and Pa both earning a proper wage, we're laughin'.'

Seraphina gazed at her sister with some awe; Angela was quiet and gentle and this was quite a long speech for her. Even so, her explanation did not seem to satisfy Evie, who made a derisive noise and scrambled up to sit astride the parapet of the bridge, gripping the grimy stones with her knees, as though she were riding a horse. ‘Laughin'? I bleedin' well ain't laughin',' she said, pushing a lock of her straight brown hair out of her eyes. ‘Why, Fee, you was real fond of that Toby, the one who worked in the bakery and taught you how to snare rabbits when you were a kid. And anyway, we ate well enough, didn't we? An' who cares about clothes?'

‘Toby was a friend to the whole family, but, even so, we didn't see much of him once he was in work,' Seraphina said, looking long and hard at the youngest Todd. She had personally supervised Evie's washing and dressing that morning and had thought her neat as a pin when she had left the flat. Yet somehow Evie had managed to get extremely dirty – the palms of her hands were black – and there was a three-cornered tear in her faded blue cotton dress. Seraphina sighed. ‘It's pretty plain that you don't care about clothes, even if Angie and myself do,' she said resignedly. ‘What a dirty little toad you are, Evie Todd! And if our pa was to hear you swearing and talking so badly . . .'

‘If he was to hear me swearing he might change his mind about a proper school being the right place for me, 'cos I learn all me swearing off of the kids there,' Evie said triumphantly. She giggled. ‘I heared one of me teachers say t'other day that there were members of her class who cussed worse'n bargees, and it's true, Fee. Some of the kids, particularly the boys, can't say a whole sentence without a bad word in it.'

Seraphina smiled; she couldn't help it. Evie always had an answer for everything, that was the trouble, and Seraphina knew the uselessness of lecturing. As soon as you started to reprimand Evie she would be off, skimming down the street in her dirty old plimsolls and probably taking them off and tying them round her neck with the laces as soon as she was out of sight. So Seraphina just said: ‘Never mind what other people do, Evie. You're the daughter of a lay preacher so you ought to be above reproach. Let the others swear if they want to, but think how it would upset Ma and Pa if they heard you cussing. I know we all miss the barge, and the canal folk, but Pa has always wanted a steadier job and to give Ma the sort of life she deserves. So don't you go spoiling it.'

Evie sighed and actually looked almost contrite. ‘Well, I won't spoil it then,' she said. ‘But oh, Fee, however are we going to stand living all cooped up for the rest of our lives? It's not so bad for you because you'll probably get married soon, but I'm only ten so I've got years and years before I can escape.'

Seraphina sighed. Because of their changed circumstances, she was to enrol on a teacher training course, and though she liked the idea of such a career she did not relish spending all that time still dependent on her parents, with no earnings of her own. Angela had already had two job interviews and thought herself fortunate to have gained a position as a sales assistant in Bunney's department store. The wage was small and the hours long but at least Angie would have money of her own. However, Seraphina had always been the brainy member of the family, soaking up her mother's teaching and going eagerly to any local school when the opportunity arose. She had taken – and passed with flying colours – her School Certificate the previous year and knew in her heart that her parents were right; once she was in teaching, she could command a decent wage and probably get work anywhere in the country, whereas poor Angie would have to struggle, perhaps for years, and have to live in the city for the rest of her life, unless she married a countryman, of course.