Lime Street Blues (16 page)

‘Where do we find a manager?’ Lachlan asked.

‘You’re already looking at him, lad. Me! If you’re agreeable, I’ll draw up a contract and all you have to do is sign on the bottom line.’

‘I’d like to read the contract first,’ said Sean.

‘Naturally. I wouldn’t dream of asking you to sign something you haven’t read.’

‘And I’m not signing anything for longer than five years.’

‘Five years it is. But, Sean,’ Billy said earnestly, ‘if I’m going to be your manager, you’ve got to learn to trust me.’

‘So, did they sign?’ Jeannie asked Elaine when she was relayed this item of news. Max hadn’t mentioned anything about a contract.

‘Yes. Dad said they were mad, they might be signing away their future, but Lachlan said all he wanted to do in the future was play the guitar and having a manager would only make that easier. All the group feel the same way, Sean too, but he’s a bit more canny than the others.’

June again. Midsummer. Another fête on Ailsham village green, another hot day. Rose Flowers was helping in the refreshment tent where it felt as if the temperature had reached boiling point.

For the very first time, Jeannie wasn’t coming; she’d gone into town with Elaine and Benny. All they did was wander round the shops looking at clothes they hadn’t the money to buy. Rose sighed. It seemed a pointless exercise, but Jeannie obviously considered it more exciting than attending the fête.

It might have been a matter of principle or just sheer cussedness, but Max hadn’t been since that time four
years ago when Tom had made him stay at home. Gerald was around somewhere, a member of the scout troop that would vie with the guides to see who could first light a fire and boil a pan of water. Rose sighed again as she poured tea into a row of plastic cups. In another four years, Gerald would be sixteen and likely to turn up his nose at the fête – Gerald, her baby, would be
working
! She did a quick calculation. By then, she would be forty, Tom sixty-four and on the verge of retirement.

‘Oh, my
God
!’ she gasped out loud and was glad when no one noticed.

What was she to do with the rest of her life, living with a sullen Tom, her children grown up and no longer at home? Stay in the Post Office, getting older and older, buying more things for the house – having paid for the television, she was now getting a washing machine on hire purchase. But she wanted to
do
things, not just buy them. Max and Jeannie had done more in their short lives than she had in her much longer one, mainly because she had missed out on this vital, growing-up period, moving from childhood to adulthood, from the orphanage to employment with Mrs Corbett, within a single day.

Waving away a cloud of steam spurting from a kettle on the stove beside her, she thought that this was no place to be on such a hot day.

She was even beginning to get on her nerves, all this moaning, even if it was in the privacy of her own head. It was time she pulled herself together. Even so, if she pulled herself together until she tied herself in knots, it didn’t disguise the fact that the future looked very bleak.

The summer term was coming to an end. Rita McDowd was fifteen and ready to leave Philip Wallace. She already
had a job lined up, as a waitress in Owen Owen’s restaurant, right in the heart of Liverpool.

‘I’ll be giving up both me own jobs soon,’ Sadie McDowd told Rose when she went into Harker’s for cigarettes – if the Post Office counter had no customers, Rose helped in the other part of the shop. She’d always made a point of acknowledging Sadie during the years when the rest of the village had ignored her. Now they had their sons’ musical careers in common.

‘I don’t know about you, Rose,’ Sadie continued chattily, ‘but I find Ailsham a bit dead. I thought I’d get a job in town meself. I can look around the big shops in me dinner hour, and me and our Rita can go together on the bus.’

‘That’ll be nice.’ Rose had never thought she’d be envious of Sadie McDowd.

Ailsham was expanding. The Ribble Bus Company had altered the route of its Liverpool–Ormskirk service so that it passed through the village to accommodate the growing number of residents. Behind the school, a large housing estate was in the course of construction and already half occupied. On the outskirts of the village, not far from Holly Lane, an engineering factory was nearing completion on what would eventually become a trading estate. And in Holly Lane itself, two new bungalows had appeared and building plots were being advertised for sale. There was talk of a supermarket, another pub.

Tom Flowers regarded all this as an abomination, but Rose couldn’t wait for the outside world to swallow up Ailsham whole.

Jeannie wasn’t due to leave school for another year. The day they broke up, she got her end of year report. It was
good, but not as good as Elaine’s, who was top of the class, as usual. Jeannie was fifth. Last year, she’d been second, but didn’t care she’d dropped three places. She’d had more interesting things on her mind than lessons, like the Cavern and the Taj Mahal. And rock ’n’ roll.

Benny was pleased to discover she was fourteenth in the class of thirty. ‘At least I’m in the top half,’ she crowed.

‘Are you going to show it to your mother this time?’ enquired Elaine.

‘Not likely! She doesn’t know we get reports. If she did, she’d expect me to be top in every single thing.’

That night, Rose suggested Jeannie remain at school till eighteen and take A levels, possibly go to university. Jeannie declined with a shudder and said it was the last thing she wanted. She would take her O levels – it would be silly to waste the last four years and it would mean she’d get a better job – but then she’d like to start work so she could earn money, buy clothes, and go out whenever she felt like it.

‘There’s just one thing, Mum. Can I stop having piano lessons? Miss Pritchard doesn’t approve of music written in the twentieth century. She won’t let me play anything modern.’

‘In that case, I’ll drop a note in Miss Pritchard’s on my way to work tomorrow and tell her you won’t be coming any more.’

‘Shouldn’t we ask Dad first?’ Jeannie had been wanting to broach the subject for ages, but was worried she would upset people, never dreaming it would be so easy.

‘There’s no need to ask your father. You’re fifteen. You can’t be made to have piano lessons if you don’t
want them. It would be a shame though, love, if you gave it up altogether. You’re very talented.’

‘I’ll never give up, Mum.’ She still practised every day and had no intention of stopping. Whenever the Merseysiders played a new number, she learnt to play it herself, picking out the melody with her right hand, adding the bass with her left, sedately at first, then, if the neighbours were out, and with a devil-may-care expression on her normally cautious face, she would press her foot on the loud pedal, and number ten Disraeli Terrace would jump to the stirring beat of rock ’n’ roll. She thoroughly enjoyed letting herself go and only wished she could do it in public in front of an audience. She’d never told a soul, not even Elaine, how much she’d like to be part of a group, just like the boys. But female rock groups were unheard of and all Jeannie could do was dream.

The Merseysiders had got used to seeing badly printed posters pasted on the windows of empty shops and on abandoned buildings announcing their next performance at a town hall somewhere, or some other location, like a community or church hall, even a scout hut. Sometimes they had main billing. Other times their name was at the bottom of the poster when they supported a better known act, such as Acker Bilk’s Paramount Jazz Band or Humphrey Lyttelton. They still played every Friday at the Taj Mahal.

Lachlan was anxious for them to play at the Cavern where four guys who called themselves the Beatles now appeared regularly, along with Gerry and the Pacemakers, Johnny Sandon and the Searchers, and other beat groups, gradually squeezing out jazz. The place was packed to the gills every night with fans.

The Taj Mahal didn’t have the same loyal following, nor as good an atmosphere. It could accommodate an audience of a hundred and fifty at the most, whereas the Cavern could take a thousand – and it opened lunchtimes. There was nowhere to dance in the Taj Mahal, and the bar served alcohol, so a few people came for the drink, not the music, and often fights were only narrowly avoided.

Although Lachlan’s sole reason for living was to play the guitar, he wanted to do it in the best place, in front of as big an audience as possible. It was his belief that the Merseysiders were just as good as the Beatles and the other groups that reigned supreme at the Cavern. He demanded, on more than one occasion, that Billy, their manager, book them a gig.

‘I’m trying, kid, I’m trying,’ Billy would cry, spreading his fat arms and shrugging. ‘But no one’s interested over there.’

Whenever they played a gig, Billy gave them a pound each. More often than not, they did two gigs a week, sometimes more. The extra money was a bonus, though their ultimate goal was to earn enough to give up their day jobs so they could concentrate on music to the exclusion of everything else.

Sean, the youngest member of the group, wasn’t as naive as the others. According to their contract, Billy was entitled to just twenty per cent of the performance fee, yet he never doled out more than a quid each. It seemed unlikely that the organisers of the various gigs they played paid out exactly the same paltry sum. Sean didn’t say anything. He couldn’t see himself sticking with Billy Kidd for five years and, if he was breaking the contract, it meant he could walk out whenever he pleased.

‘It’s lovely, Sean. Can I try it on?’ Sadie lifted the gold pendant on a slender chain out of its velvet box.

‘It’s your birthday present, Mam. You can do whatever you like with it.’

‘Oh, would you just look at me now!’ Sadie was admiring her reflection in the mirror. ‘You’re a good lad, Sean McDowd.’ She stroked her son’s lean cheek and Sean shuffled his feet uncomfortably. He didn’t like shows of emotion, yet had enjoyed his mother’s pleasure at the gift.

‘Would you like something to eat, son?’

‘I wouldn’t mind egg and chips.’ He couldn’t imagine enjoying anything as much as he did egg and chips. ‘Is there any tea on the go?’

‘I’ll make some before I start on the spuds.’

Sadie sang while she peeled the potatoes. She felt so happy, yet wouldn’t have minded a little weep, so touched had she been by Sean’s present. He was the best son a mother could have, and Rita was the best daughter. She was ashamed of the way she’d neglected them during the years when they’d been little, but she’d been sunk in misery and despair, pining for Kevin.

She didn’t need Kevin any more, not now she had such a good job. Sadie virtually ran a small hotel in Hawke Street in the centre of Liverpool. It had just twelve bedrooms and catered mainly for travelling salesmen. The couple who owned it, Mr and Mrs Lunn, lived in the basement. They were getting on, no longer up to running the place on their own. They could manage weekends when there were only a few guests, or sometimes none at all. Sadie saw to the laundry, answered the phone, bought the groceries, even attended to the post, answering letters in her careful, schoolgirlish handwriting. She was gradually improving the place,
buying new curtains, and flowers for the reception area. A woman called Bridget did the cleaning and came in early to make the breakfasts. In effect, Sadie actually had her own staff of one!

The man in the labour exchange who’d sent her after the job had said, ‘You look the sort of person who could handle responsibility.’ Sadie’s head had been swollen ever since. She’d bought a couple of new frocks with her first week’s wages and had her hair set once a fortnight. She was beginning to resemble the pretty teenage girl who’d left County Clare in search of fame and fortune with Kevin McDowd – the louse, Sadie added as an afterthought.

‘What’s that you’re singing, Mam?’

Sadie hadn’t realised she’d been singing. She hummed a few more notes to see if she could recognise the tune. ‘It’s one of your dad’s,’ she shouted. ‘It’s one he wrote himself.’

To her surprise, Sean came to the kitchen door. ‘What’s it called?’

It took a few seconds to remember. ‘ “Moon Under Water”.’

‘Do you know all the words?’

‘I’m not sure. I’ll have a go.’

‘Like the moon under water,’ Sadie half-sang, half-spoke. ‘I can’t touch you.

Like stars in a mirror, you’re not there.
Like a rainbow in the sky,
A shadow flitting by,
A cobweb in the wind,
A promise unfulfilled.
Like a dream that’s gone by morning,
The mist when day is dawning.
You’re my love,
You’re my life,
But you’re not there
.

‘What do you think?’ she enquired when she’d finished.

‘I like it, Mam.’

‘It wouldn’t do for your lot, would it, son? It’s not your sort of music.’

‘It might be. Perhaps you could write the words down. Lachlan wants to include a ballad instead of us doing a whole hour of rock ’n’ roll when we play at the Cavern.’

It’d be great if they could do a ballad of their own. Under pressure, Billy had at last booked them a date in December.