The Seven Streets of Liverpool by Maureen Lee Read Free Book Online Page A

Milland and a new actress called Deanna Durbin, who had a voice like an angel. She sang ‘Someone to Care For Me,’ a song with the most beautiful words.
    Lena walked back to the house in Pearl Street in the blackout, singing the song inside her head and feeling as if parts of her that had been asleep before were being woken up by new emotions. She hadn’t realised how dull her life had been until now.
    Did that mean she considered Maurice to be dull? Surely not! Yet he didn’t possess the cheerful good looks or outgoing personality of Calum Reilly, or the gritty attraction of the much older Jack Doyle. As for the absent Nick Stephens, there’d been a photo of him and Eileen on their wedding day in the cottage, and he was as handsome as a film star – as well as a genuine war hero. Beside them Maurice was – well, she couldn’t say exactly what attributes Maurice had when compared to these other men.
    Anyway, he was coming home next week – well, not exactly home, but to Liverpool – and Lena realised that she wasn’t looking forward to seeing him nearly as much as she usually did.
    She was approaching Pearl Street when a man’s voice called from behind, ‘Hello there. It’s Mrs Newton, isn’t it?’
    Lena turned. The man caught up with her and raised his hat. ‘George Ransome, I live quite near you,’ he said politely. ‘Number seventeen.’
    She could just about make him out in the milky moonlight. She didn’t feel nervous; there were other people about. What was more, she recognised him, having noticed him some mornings leaving his house just before she did herself. He was fifty-ish, with a Clark Gable moustache and a rather wolfish air. Smartly dressed, he could have easily just stepped out of a Burton’s tailors’ window. Someone must have told him her name.
    ‘Good evening,’ she said.
    ‘What did you think of the picture?’ he asked.
    ‘Oh, were you there? I really liked it.’
    ‘So did I. It took me mind off the war for a couple of hours. I think they’re called “escapist”, those sort of pictures.’
    ‘Are they really? Well, that’s true enough. I didn’t think about the war once while I was watching.’
    ‘Do you go often to the pictures, Mrs Newton?’ They had stopped outside the old dairy.
    ‘Most Sat’days,’ she said. She wouldn’t have minded asking him in for a cup of tea, but it seemed terribly forward; he might get the wrong idea.
    He tipped his hat again. ‘Perhaps we’ll see each other again next week. The Cat and the Canary with Bob Hope and Paulette Goddard is showing. It’s a comedy – I saw it at the Palais de Luxe in town when it first came out.’
    ‘When I was in Birmingham, I sometimes went to see the same picture twice,’ Lena confessed. ‘Good night, Mr Ransome.’
    ‘Good night, Mrs Newton.’
    He stood there until she had unlocked the door and gone inside. Lena was sure he would have appreciated being asked inside for a cuppa, though of course he might have a wife indoors who he couldn’t wait to get back to.

    Nick was at a party. It was being held in the top flat of a four-storey house in Queen’s Gate and was so crowded it was virtually standing room only. Apparently an equerry to the King or someone of equal importance lived on the ground and first floors and a woman who made clothes for well-known actresses on the second.
    Everyone was drunk, Nick included. He was propped up against the wall, attempting to overcome the inclination to slither down and sit on the floor, where people would stand on him or fall over him. Though at least then he would be out of sight of the fair-haired chap standing opposite, who had been watching him for ages. If you could describe a gaze as ‘truculent’, then his was. He was a little younger than Nick, and not wearing a uniform. Despite having drunk far too much, Nick was trying hard to remember who the chap was. He felt sure he wasn’t from the office, nor had they been in the RAF at the same time.