The Lost Daughter of Liverpool: A heartbreaking and gritty family saga (The Mersey Trilogy Book 1)

  THE LOST DAUGHTER OF LIVERPOOL

  A HEARTBREAKING AND GRITTY FAMILY SAGA

  PAM HOWES

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Letter from Pam

  Acknowledgments

  Also by Pam Howes

  Dedicated to the memory of my much-missed, lovely friend, Geoff Barber. 1950–2015

  CHAPTER 1

  KNOWSLEY, LIVERPOOL, JULY 1946

  Dora Evans breathed a sigh of relief when the dinner-break bell rang out, gloriously loud and clear. Peace descended as the hum from twenty machines ceased, punctuated only by the loud voices of the factory girls as they dithered between eating in the canteen, or sitting outside on the grassy knoll at the back of Palmer’s factory with their pack-ups.

  Dora and her friend Joanie Lees brought their dinner from home each day, except for Fridays, when it was their favourite Spam fritters and chips in the canteen. They hurried outside into the bright sunshine and sat down on the wall that skirted Old Mill Lane, just under the now-faded factory sign that boasted Palmer’s Ladies Fashions of Distinction. The decorative black and gold cast-iron railings that had previously graced the top of the sandstone wall had been removed a few years ago to be melted down to help the war effort. Now, wild flowers grew in their place, cascading down to the ground, giving the wall colour and a place for butterflies and bees to frequent.

  These days, there were no distinctive fashions made at Palmer’s. At the beginning of the war, the factory had been commissioned to make uniforms for the troops and nurses. But since the war had ended and old Gerald Palmer had passed away, to be succeeded by his son-in-law, George Kane, who, according to the loyal workforce, hadn’t a clue about the rag-trade, the company had struggled to make ends meet. The only contracts so far this year were for men’s shirts that were sold in Littlewoods stores and catalogues.

  Dora and Joanie had been classmates all through school and were best pals. Joanie was the only girl in her family and, with four younger brothers who drove her mad with their brawling and noisy games, had spent most of her childhood playing at Dora’s house, where they’d spend hours making dolly clothes from scraps of material that Dora’s mam had given them. The pair were as close as sisters and shared a special bond and all their secrets.

  They’d joined Palmer’s in 1941 when they left school, just after their fifteenth birthdays. Both enjoyed working in the business, though they daydreamed about making pretty dresses and skirts, rather than spending all day stitching collars and cuffs onto shirts. The nearest they’d come to making any dresses at all had been the plain cotton ones that were sent out to the nurses serving abroad. Still, they’d been helping the war effort and it was a decent enough job. They were grateful for the training they’d received, and their supervisor said they were exceptional seamstresses.

  ‘What you got in your sarnies today?’ Dora asked, taking a greaseproof-wrapped package from her bag and smiling at the jam and margarine filling. She had two ginger nuts for afters too.

  ‘Dripping on toast, again.’ Joanie pulled a face.

  ‘Here, swap for half of mine, and give me half of yours.’

  ‘Thanks,’ Joanie said. Dora’s mam’s home-made bread and jam was always delicious.

  The pair tucked in, enjoying the welcome warmth of the sun after being cooped up all morning. After they finished their dinner and shared a bottle of lukewarm corporation pop Dora had dug out of her bag, they dropped down onto the patch of grass below the wall to sunbathe. Dora hitched up her faded wrap-over pinny, exposing her bare legs slightly, and Joanie did likewise.

  ‘Look at my legs! What if Frank can’t get me any stockings for the wedding? We need to spend time on the beach at New Brighton to get some more sun on them,’ Dora said. ‘Might ask Joe if he’ll take me across on the ferry at the weekend.’

  Dora was excited about marrying her fiancé, Joe Rodgers. They were teenage sweethearts and had always been inseparable at school, but then the war had forced them apart. After years of anxious days and nights, and love-letters that took months to arrive, Joe returned safely home. He’d immediately proposed, and Dora, who’d dreamed and hoped for that moment the whole time he’d been away, had accepted.

  She knew she was lucky that her Joe had come home safe and sound from the war, and apart from being a lot skinnier, he hadn’t changed too much in his years away with the army. Several members of his platoon were never coming home, including young men from their village, who’d left behind heartbroken wives and girlfriends. For some, it wasn’t all Vera Lynn, bunting, and finger sandwiches on VE Day, as Dora’s mam reminded her whenever Dora got too carried away with her fancy plans for the big day.

  She’d never have got through those long and lonely years without Joanie by her side, offering comfort when the postman didn’t bring a letter from Joe for weeks on end and she’d feared the worst, helping her to keep her spirits up, and always encouraging her to think positively.

  ‘Isn’t he playing with the band next weekend?’ Joanie asked, tucking a straying curl under her turban.

  ‘Yes, but only on Saturday this week.’ Dora smiled as she thought about how handsome Joe looked when he played the alto saxophone in Murphy’s Dance Band. He had been part of his regiment’s brass band, and when some of the lads had suggested forming a dance band after being demobbed, he’d been happy to join them. ‘Maybe he’ll take me on Sunday. You and I need to work on Saturday anyway, if we’re going to get the bridesmaids’ dresses finished.’

  Dora’s own gown was hanging in the small wardrobe in her bedroom, covered by a sheet. White lace over taffeta with lace sleeves; made and designed by herself and Joanie, with some help from Mam. It was the type of dress she’d thought she could only ever dream of wearing, as fabric and money were in short supply.

  Dora got to her feet and stretched. ‘Let’s go inside and grab a cuppa before it’s time to go back upstairs.’

  In the canteen they collected two mugs from the trolley and joined some of their co-workers at a table near the window. Peggy, a girl with unruly red hair and a voice as loud as a Mersey foghorn, was flirting with Len, one of the packers, who’d rolled up his shirt sleeves and was flexing his muscles outside the open window in an attempt to impress her.

  ‘Call them muscles?’ she yelled as he raised an eyebrow. ‘Maude ’ere’s got bigger muscles than youse. Show ’im, Maude.’

  The girls laughed as Maude, a plump girl in her late teens, rolled up her sleeves and flexed her muscles in his direction. ‘Beat that if you can,’ she said with a giggle.

  ‘How’s yer weddin
g plans coming along, Dora?’ Peggy asked, flicking cigarette ash onto the quarry-tiled floor. ‘Youse finished making yer dress yet?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Dora replied. ‘We’re onto the bridesmaids’ dresses now. They should be finished this weekend, and then we can relax a bit.’

  ‘Not long now, eh, gel? When is it, six weeks?’

  ‘End of August.’ Dora took a sip of her rapidly cooling tea.

  ‘And then yer freedom’ll be up the Swanee, queen; especially when a babby comes along. Have youse found anywhere to live yet?’

  ‘We’re staying with Joe’s mum for a while, until something else turns up,’ Dora said with a half-smile, thinking about her freedom or the lack of it once married. Starting a family wasn’t in her immediate plans, and the thought of living with Joe’s mother filled her with dread. She wasn’t the easiest woman to get along with and a bit over-possessive where her only son was concerned. She’d so far shown no real interest in the wedding plans either, which suited Dora and her mam, as they preferred to do it themselves. She wished there was room for her and Joe to live with her parents, but there wasn’t, so her future mother-in-law’s it had to be.

  ‘Right, gels, let’s get back to work.’ Peggy jumped to her feet and stubbed the end of her ciggie out. The workers were not allowed to smoke anywhere else in the factory. The bales of fabric and boxes of completed shirts piled up everywhere were deemed a fire hazard. ‘The sooner we start, the sooner it’ll be the next tea break.’

  Dora swallowed the last of her brew and followed the other girls out of the canteen and up the wide wooden staircase to the first-floor workroom. She sat down on her chair next to a window overlooking farmland in the distance, and switched her machine back on. Joanie settled at her machine next to Dora’s. The box of shirt collars they were working on was sitting in front of them and they each reached out and grabbed the next collar in the batch.

  ‘There’s nothing more boring than this,’ Dora muttered. ‘No colour, no fancy bits, just plain old white. It’s driving me mad.’

  ‘Me too,’ Joanie agreed. ‘Chin up, girl. Just keep thinking of the future.’

  The wireless played in the background, broadcasting the end of Workers’ Playtime with the show’s producer announcing his usual, ‘Good luck, all workers.’

  ‘Pity they never choose Palmer’s for a broadcast,’ Peggy shouted above the general hubbub. ‘Not much chance of that now though. It’s always one of them big London factories.’

  Dora trimmed the thread and threw the collar back into the box, where it was picked up by Peggy, who snipped the corners, turned it inside out and passed it over to Maude for pressing. Dora sighed and reached for another. She hated piece-work and they never got to see the finished garment. There’d been a time, before war broke out, when their factory had been as busy as any in London, and the floor above them had also buzzed with the noise of machinery and happy workers. But that floor was now silent, closed except for storage, and only twenty of the factory’s forty machines were still in use.

  Surely there would be a time in the not too distant future when money wouldn’t be as tight, and ladies would want to wear pretty dresses and smart suits again, and not just for church on a Sunday or to a dance. Dora thought of the bridesmaid dresses. If she and Joanie were to have any hope of starting up their own business they needed those dresses to be the talk of the town. At the moment it was just a pipedream; girls like her and Joanie didn’t own businesses anyway.

  CHAPTER 2

  Dora ignored the loud wolf-whistle from one of the packers as she and Joanie rode their bicycles out of the factory yard and turned onto Old Mill Lane.

  ‘Cheeky devil.’ Dora smiled as the gentle summer breeze blew her long honey-blonde hair around her face. She loved the feeling of release after it had been secured all day under her turban. Joanie still had her hair tucked inside hers, but her unruly curls were starting to stray and dangle down into her eyes. She stopped pedalling and rang her bell. Dora, a few yards in front, braked too and turned around. She laughed as Joanie whipped off the red and white checked scarf, shoved it into the basket on the front of her bike and ran her fingers through her mousey brown hair. Both girls chose not to wear the metal hair curlers that some of the factory girls had on under their turbans. There was no need – Dora’s hair was naturally wavy, and Joanie’s was a mass of corkscrew curls.

  ‘Freedom, eh?’ Dora said. ‘I hate that sweaty feeling; makes my scalp all itchy. You definitely coming over later?’ she asked as they set off up the lane again, riding side by side. ‘Then we can see about tea-dipping that lace our Frank got us. Hope it works, otherwise it’ll be ruined. And then what?’

  ‘It should be fine, and a nice contrast to the dress material,’ Joanie said.

  When they reached the cottage on Sugar Lane, Dora’s dad was in the front garden. He doffed his cap at the girls and carried on weeding the flower beds.

  ‘See you ’bout seven,’ Joanie called as she went on her way to her home on nearby Knowsley Lane.

  ‘You okay, Dad?’ Dora climbed off her bike, parked it beneath the window of the terraced cottage and retrieved her handbag from the basket. ‘How’s your leg?’

  ‘Playing up a bit, chuck,’ Jim Evans said, turning towards his pretty daughter who looked so much like her mother, with her blonde hair, big blue eyes, trim figure and a wide smile. ‘Bloody shrapnel.’ He rubbed his thigh. ‘It’ll never be right, but at least I’ve still got it, not like poor Len down the road. And I’m quite capable of doing a bit of work, so I’m not grumbling.’ Poor young Len had lost both legs in Normandy at the D-Day Landings, but still managed a smile and a cheery wave when his mother pushed him out for a bit of fresh air each afternoon. Dora’s dad, who’d been stationed with the Home Guard, had lost part of his thigh muscle as well as breaking his leg in several places during a bomb blast in Liverpool in the Blitz. It had been touch and go, and although his leg was stiff with the metal pins holding it together and much weaker than before, he coped well enough. ‘Yer mam’s inside. I’ll be in meself in a few minutes when our Frank gets home. I’ll see he puts your bike in the shed, if you’ve finished with it for today.’

  ‘I have, thanks, Dad.’ She frowned as he turned back to his gardening, coughing and spluttering as he did so. His chest had never been right since the war, all that poison he’d breathed in during the horrendous fires of the Blitz on their city. But he was stubborn, refused to go to the doctor’s, and there was no point in arguing with him about it.

  Dora let herself in and wiped her feet on the mat in the tiny vestibule, where the staircase, with its worn, red-patterned runner, held in place with old brass stair rods, rose steeply in front of her. She loved the little cottage she’d been born and brought up in and was glad that her dad was still able to do his gardening work at Knowsley Hall nearby. The rent-free cottage was tied to his job and it would break his heart if he lost it.

  She pushed open the door to the front room, where her mam was resting on the sofa; feet encased in blue slippers and stretched out on the colourful rag rug. In spite of the open window, the room felt stifling as Dora walked in, the range in the exposed brick chimney breast still glowing from an earlier fire. Mam used the side ovens for bread-making, and Monday was always her baking day, so the whole house would feel like a furnace tonight. It was cosy on cold winter days when fingers of ice clung to the windows and the heat rose up the chimney to the rooms above, but a nightmare in the warmer months of the year. Mam’s eyes were closed and her glasses had slipped down her nose. Unusual for her to take forty winks, Dora thought, especially at tea time when they’d all be coming in from work, Dad from his part-time gardening and her brother Frank from his labouring job down at the docks.

  Mam had been born into quite a well-to-do family in Hoylake. Dora had never met her maternal grandparents. She’d been told that her grandmother had fallen on hard times following the death of her husband during the First World War, and she’d passed away not long after the war e
nded. Mam had met Dad when she’d come to work in service at Knowsley Hall, needing a job and a roof over her head, and they’d married soon after. She’d managed to hold on to her gentle Cheshire accent and had instilled in her children a nice way of speaking. Dora had often been teased at school for sounding posh, but was glad now that she could adapt her way of speaking to suit any situation, although her older brother Frank’s accent had strong overtones of guttural Liverpudlian. He’d told their mam he couldn’t do posh in front of the dockers, he’d be laughed out of town.

  Dora shook her gently by the shoulder. ‘Mam, Mam, it’s me. Are you okay?’

  Mary Evans opened her eyes and smiled. ‘I wasn’t asleep, chuck, just resting my eyes. I’ve been on my feet all day.’ She struggled upright. ‘Come and see what I got today.’

  Dora followed her into the kitchen at the back of the cottage. On the scrubbed pine table stood the fruits of her mam’s labours: a few plain scones, enough small loaves for the week and a Victoria sponge, sandwiched together with jam made from hedgerow blackberries and apples from her dad’s wartime Dig for Victory efforts. Most back gardens had been turned over to growing vegetables and fruit for the families and her mam had taught Dora how to feed an army on scraps. Nothing ever got wasted in their household. There was always a decent meal after a long day at work, even if it was just a meatless stew, like today’s Blind Scouse.

  Mam picked up a brown paper bag from the table and opened it. Inside were a good handful of glacé cherries, fat raisins and chopped walnuts.

  Dora gasped. They had a bag of currants in the pantry that Frank had brought home a few months ago, which they’d been saving towards the wedding cake. Her dad’s chickens would provide the eggs, which were so much nicer than using the powdered substitute that tasted nothing like the real thing. They’d been saving up their sugar rations, Dora and her mam substituting connie-onnie for sugar in their tea and porridge. The meagre butter rations had been eked out, so there was just enough with this week’s supply for the cake. Frank and his mate had commandeered a sack of flour down at the docks.