Daughters of the Mersey

by Anne Baker

Genres: Family Life; World War I; Sagas

Synopsis

With the scars of World War I still fresh, the Dransfield family face further challenges... A heart-breaking saga of love, loss and tragedy, Daughters of the Mersey details the effects of war on a Liverpool family, from much-loved author Anne Baker. Perfect for fans of Nadine Dorries and Lyn Andrews. When Steven Dransfield loses his fortune in the Depression, his wife Leonie is forced to save the family from ruin. But Steve resents the success of her dressmaking business and, trapped in a loveless marriage, Leonie is drawn into the arms of another man. Just as their children, Milo and June, begin to spread their wings, Leonie finds herself pregnant, but her duty lies with her family and when Amy is born she unites them all. Then with the outbreak of World War II and danger looming in Liverpool, Amy is evacuated to Wales, and, as the bombs start to drop, lives are lost and hearts are broken and the Dransfields must learn to support one another through the heartache that lies ahead... What readers are saying about Daughters of the Mersey : ' One of the best books ever - I would definitely recommend this book to my friends... It was fantastic. I found the book a compelling read - I picked it up every time I had a spare minute' ' Could not put this book down, Anne Baker brings these characters to life, and you transform yourself back in time... Excellent! '

Release date: December 20, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 404

Sample

Summer 1929

LEONIE DRANSFIELD HAD UNDRESSED for bed. Feeling confused and worried, she was sitting in front of her dressing table watching Steve, her husband, in her mirror. His movements were slow and awkward and it took him a long time to unstrap his false leg and take it off.

Without it, he needed his crutches to move about and he kept them propped against the side of their bed. He let his false leg clatter to the floor and heaved himself between the sheets; even now she had to look away from that bare stump.

During the war, Steve had fought in the trenches and been horribly injured in the winter of 1917. His left leg had had to be amputated above the knee, and though his other wounds had eventually healed, scars had been left not only on his body but on his mind.

She’d noticed he’d been upset and grumpy over the last few days. He’d said he wasn’t well, that he was plagued by one of his migraines, but now he’d admitted that he’d had this bad news and hadn’t been able to tell her. That made it sound very bad indeed.

She felt anxiety stir within her. ‘What d’you mean, bad news?’

‘You know I’ve sold two shops.’ Steve had inherited a leading antiques business from his family. ‘You know the business went down in the war and that it’s never really recovered.’

‘Of course I know the shops have been sold.’ Leonie was impatient, afraid something terrible had happened. ‘You said the money would be a nice little nest egg, it would provide a cushion in bad times and a comfort in our old age, but really we need it now to put food on the table and fuel in the grate. What have you done with it? I thought you intended to hand it over to Hawkes and Harmsworth to invest.’

The stockbrokers Hawkes and Harmsworth had served the Dransfield family well over the last fifty years. They still looked after the remnants of the wealth they’d made in antiques.

‘I tried something new. I went to a different firm.’

‘For heaven’s sake! What on earth made you do that?’ Leonie’s heart plummeted. They were desperate for more income. That was why he’d sold the shops in the first place. Surely he hadn’t lost all that money? She could hardly sit still.

Steve groaned. ‘William Hawkes is so old-fashioned. He puts me into companies that don’t earn much interest.’

She leapt up to open the bedroom window. ‘He’s honest, Steve. Yes, he may be conservative, but he’s always been mindful of your interests and doesn’t take unnecessary risks with your money.’

‘I did it for you and the children.’

‘What?’ Leonie could no longer bite back her anger. ‘The last thing I wanted was for you to take risks. You must know that.’

‘I’m sorry. We needed more money. I thought I could get it. You know I’ve lost my health and strength, I can’t work like a normal man.’

Leonie seethed, everything always came back to that.

She couldn’t help bursting out at him, ‘You were greedy. So not only is there no interest, but the capital has gone too?’

‘It wasn’t my fault. It was out-and-out fraud. They were gangsters, out to do me. I’ve been worried stiff this past week.’

‘Steve, surely you knew there were fraudsters out there who would cheat you if you gave them half a chance? You knew you could trust William Hawkes. I can’t believe you’ve done this.’

Steve looked contrite.

‘Have you reported it to the police?’

‘Yes, but I don’t think anything will come of it. They didn’t hold out much hope of my getting it back.’

‘What’s done is done,’ she said with the resignation she’d learned from married life.

He was only forty-six but he was gauntly thin with rounded shoulders and sparse mouse-brown hair that was greying. Pain and disappointment had dogged him since the last war. He looked old for his years and she felt full of pity for him, but he didn’t want pity. There was nothing he resented more.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Don’t go on at me, Leonie, I can’t stand that. I know I made a mistake and I truly wish I’d stayed with William Hawkes.’

She could see tears welling in his eyes and looked away. She mustn’t say any more, he was given to bouts of depression and she didn’t want to make matters worse. He knew well enough he’d been a fool. ‘If it’s gone, it’s better to put it out of your mind.’

‘But I can’t. What are we going to do for money? Our income is going down all the time and we’ve got two children to bring up.’

‘We’ll manage somehow,’ Leonie said, giving her darkblond hair a perfunctory brushing – a token of her normal routine. ‘We’ll manage,’ she repeated. ‘We always have.’

She glanced at herself in the mirror and sighed. Worried eyes stared back at her.

Was her fringe and shoulder-length bob getting a bit girlish for her at thirty-six? She wished she had lustrous curls like her children but they’d inherited those from Steve, though his brown hair was anything but lustrous now. Her hair was almost straight with just enough bend in it to frame her face. At one time, Steve used to say it suited her like this.

Leonie got into bed beside him but she couldn’t get to sleep. To be defrauded out of the money they’d been relying on brought them to crisis point.

Leonie had been orphaned at seven years of age and brought up by her Great-Aunt Felicity, who had managed on a small income through thrift and self-sufficiency and using her common sense. Leonie had been brought up to do the same and it was these skills that had helped them survive so far. Steve, on the other hand, had been born to a family that had never gone short. He’d been used to spending money freely and having the best of everything.

When Leonie had become engaged to Steven Dransfield, her Aunt Felicity had said, ‘How fortunate you are, to be marrying into a family like the Dransfields. You’ll never want for anything.’ Leonie had been of the same opinion and had enjoyed every comfort money could buy during the first few years of her marriage. But the war had changed everything and Aunt Felicity had been proved very wrong.

Leonie knew well enough how they’d managed so far. Steve’s only brother Raymond had been killed at Mons and Steve had inherited all his family’s wealth. First and foremost was the house they lived in, it had been the Dransfield family home and very comfortable in its day. In addition, he’d received the business that had earned a good living for the family over several generations. As they’d been antique dealers, they’d kept the pieces they’d admired most to furnish it, so he’d inherited many valuable objects too. Most of these he’d already sold into the trade because he owned the shops where the value of antiques and fine art could easily be realised.

Steve had been a boarder at a public school and though his children weren’t having that luxury, they were at fee-paying day schools. His mother’s jewellery was the first thing he’d sold to meet that expense.

When they’d had a plumbing problem, Steve had taken an eighteenth-century French ormolu mantel clock to the shop. When a tree had blown down in a gale and taken a few slates off the roof, he’d taken the George III silver tea and coffee service to pay the bill.

Leonie tossed and turned in bed, wondering how on earth they would manage now.

LEONIE AND STEVE HAD been married just before the Great War began. At that time his parents had been alive and so had his brother. Leonie felt full of love for Steve and knew he felt the same way about her. She expected marriage to transform her life. She’d looked forward to being a good wife and taking care of Steve and the home he’d rented for them. They’d both hoped that, in time, they’d have a family of their own.

Steve had been working for his father in the family antiques business which had been started by his great-grandfather in the last century. At the time, they’d been running an auction house and they owned four shops. The flagship of the business was in central Liverpool.

The family lived in some style on the Esplanade at New Ferry, in a spacious single-storey house they called Mersey Reach, built to their own specifications about the middle of Queen Victoria’s reign. It had been designed with many Georgian features, and had six bedrooms, a music room, a garden of two acres and accommodation for live-in staff in the cellar. It was in a very convenient position being within easy walking distance of the ferry terminus to Liverpool.

At the beginning of the war Steve hadn’t wanted to join up, he’d just wanted to get on with his life and stay with Leonie, their future had looked rosy. He’d had to struggle with his conscience, believing he should do his bit but his father had persuaded him not to, saying he needed him in the business. When the avalanche of volunteers dried up in 1916, conscription came in and he’d had to go.

The war had marred everything and brought unexpected hardships. Leonie felt it had torn them apart. Left on her own, she gave up the tenancy of the house Steve had rented on their marriage and returned to live with her Aunt Felicity because she was now in her eighties and in failing health. There was little food to be had in the shops and it was rising rapidly in price. By the time Miles, their first child, was born in 1917, Steve was fighting in the trenches in France.

Miles was a Dransfield family name and Steve’s choice. He was a lovely strong baby with a lot of dark hair that had a reddish tinge. His face was round and rarely without a smile and he slept all night from an early age.

Leonie was kept busy caring for her baby and her aunt and looking after the house. Every evening when both were settled for the night she wrote to Steve, and his regular letters gave point to her day.

Then suddenly his letters stopped coming. Leonie tried to believe it was a problem with the post and that several would come together. The empty days stretched on until she was almost out of her mind with worry.

It was over a month before she heard that he’d been injured on the Somme and repatriated to a hospital near London. Her first feelings were of utter relief. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

When she went down to see him, she was shocked to find him in pain and looking so ill. He had been caught in shellfire which had killed three men and injured two others. He had abdominal injuries caused by flying debris, as well as major injuries to his leg which had meant amputation.

His doctors told Leonie they saw no reason why he shouldn’t make a good recovery and cope with his disability. He spent almost a year in different hospitals before being sent to Woodley Grange, a mansion near Chester that had been converted to provide rehabilitation and convalescence for injured soldiers. He was near enough for Leonie to visit him often, and though his doctors continued to talk hopefully of his recovery, he’d begun to lose heart.

Steve’s parents, Edward and Isobel, were worried about him too and they did their best to help her. Edward hired a carriage to drive Leonie to and from the train station and Isobel liked to have charge of the baby. But only a few months later she began to complain of feeling unwell. Nothing seemed to help and eventually she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. It was a terrible shock to them all.

There were other problems too. The Dransfields had always employed a cook and a housemaid, but they both gave notice in the same month. The war had resulted in a dearth of domestic help as munitions factories were advertising for workers and paying higher wages for shorter hours. Leonie found them a woman who would come on three mornings a week to do the rough work but it wasn’t enough. Edward did what he could but Leonie had to go in every day to help with the cooking. With Miles and Aunt Felicity to take care of too, they were both finding it exhausting.

One day Edward and Isobel suggested she move in with them and take over the running of the family home. It seemed the only logical course. Leonie was fond of her in-laws and they got on well together.

Great-Aunt Felicity was moved into a room with a lovely view over the river, but she survived there for only another six weeks. Leonie cared for her and sat with her when she was dying and found it emotionally exhausting. Steve’s mother was failing too. She spent the last months of her life when the weather was fine on a day bed in the summer house.

When Isobel passed away in her sleep one night, Leonie was grief-stricken and she and her father-in-law comforted each other as best they could.

Edward was coming up to retirement age but carried on working because a lot of his staff had joined up, but in truth, there was less work to do, the business was suffering.

Leonie longed for the end of the war but focused her mind on visiting Steve in Woodley Grange, her daily chores and caring for Edward and her little son. Miles was thriving, a happy little boy who brought great pleasure to them both and made them hope for a better future.

When the war ended, the War Office granted Steve a pension of £1. 10/- per week and Leonie brought him home to Mersey Reach to join the family. By the end of 1919 he’d recovered enough to return to work to become one of their buyers. It entailed a lot of travelling and attending auctions to buy good-quality antiques to stock their shops and both Leonie and Edward noticed he found the work tiring.

The only good thing that happened in the family in the aftermath of war was that Leonie gave birth to a daughter. They called her June and she brought comfort to Steve and his father. She was a pretty baby with fair hair and big round blue eyes and both Edward and Steve loved to sit and hold her in their arms. Leonie blessed the fact that there was a family business to support them and devoted herself to the children and the running of the house.

They’d always held their auctions in a hall that was leasehold and in 1924 the lease came up for renewal. Edward deliberated for a long time about whether he should renew it and in the end decided not to because the rent was being put up to what he considered was an exorbitant level. It upset him to see the family business going downhill.

One lunchtime, Steve argued with his father about the value of a grandfather clock he’d bought at auction. Edward said he’d paid too much for it and Steve blamed him for the deteriorating profits in the business. The argument developed into a huge row. When the shouting died down, Leonie took a tea tray into the conservatory where she knew Edward was reading. It shocked her to see his eyes swimming with tears and she sank down in the chair beside him.

‘He doesn’t mean to upset you, Edward. Deep down Steve probably knows you are right, but he can’t control these terrible moods he has.’

‘He certainly can’t. He said some terrible things.’

‘You must forgive him. There are times when he hardly knows what he’s saying. I think it’s frustration that he can’t pull his weight. He wants to take his rightful place in the business but he can’t. He can’t get over what the war did to him.’

Edward took her hand in his and squeezed it. ‘He’s lucky to have married a strong woman like you.’

‘I don’t feel strong, just sorry that things have turned out like this for us all.’

‘You are strong, Leonie, and very patient too, and you’re going to need all the strength you have. I find Steve hard to cope with now and I’m afraid that in time you may too.’

‘No.’ She smiled. ‘He’s my husband.’

His hand, distorted with the swollen joints of old age, patted hers. ‘He’s not the husband you married. Steve needs you. If ever you left him—’

‘I won’t, I love him.’

‘I love him too but . . . Promise me, Leonie,’ he said, ‘that you’ll never give up on him. Promise me you’ll never leave him.’

‘I won’t, Edward. I promise.’

He patted her hand again. ‘Thank you.’

‘I won’t give up on you either. What about having this tea now?’

For the first time in three generations the family felt short of money.

Steve had been brought up to believe that when his father retired, the job of running the family business would be his, but he was worried that his father thought he was not up to it. Edward knew the time had come for him to make a decision, and he finally concluded that for the sake of the business, his wisest choice would be to promote George Courtney as manager. George was a distant relative, considerably older than Steve, and had been working in the business for ten years in a senior position.

Steve was expecting it, Edward had talked it over with him, but it made him resentful and more frustrated than ever.

Without the daily trip to the shop, Edward seemed to lose all purpose in life and began to fade away. One morning when Steve looked in on his father before going to work he found him asleep. He was still in bed at lunchtime. Leonie heated some soup and took it up for him but she couldn’t persuade him to eat much of it. She’d thought he was dozing again when suddenly he jerked into a sitting position. ‘Open the gates,’ he commanded in a more imperious voice than she’d ever heard him use before. He closed his eyes and dropped back against his pillows. It took her a long moment to realise he was dead.

Leonie could hardly get her breath. She’d failed to understand how close to death Edward had been and that shocked and upset her. With shaking fingers she covered Edward’s face with his sheet, pulled herself upright and went to phone for the doctor, blessing the fact one had been recently installed. She was still trembling when Steve came home.

She didn’t realise how deeply affected Steve was by the death of his father and neither did his doctor. He became completely wrapped up in his own difficulties and left the day-to-day running of the family and the home to her, and the responsibilities of the business to others.

He’d missed several opportunities to buy stock for the shops and George had felt compelled to find somebody else to do his job. After that, Steve only went near the business when he felt like it.

As the years went by he seemed to withdraw from Leonie and no longer wanted to join in family activities. He had good days and bad, but his black moods made him flare up at everybody and the children got on his nerves. She blessed the fact that their bungalow was large and substantially built, so the children’s noise didn’t carry to his study, but all the same it became a struggle to cope.

The children were growing up and finding their own friends. She’d always thought the name Miles a bit formal for a small boy and when he started school and she heard his friends calling him Milo, she thought it suited him better. Only his father persisted in calling him Miles.

Routine maintenance on the house had long since ceased. It had not been repainted for eleven years and was beginning to look shabby. There was a Victorian conservatory between the large drawing room and the music room. The roof was a dome of glass but the walls were brick and windowless. It caught the afternoon sun and Edward had grown hothouse flowers there, but now the glass panes leaked.

The garden was no longer magnificent. Once there had been a full-time gardener and a boy to look after it, now they had an old man who came for a few hours a week in the summer to cut the grass nearest to the house. The children played in the summer house and Leonie occasionally sat there if she had time on a sunny afternoon. She’d dug over a plot and was growing vegetables to save money. That still left a large area that had reverted to field where Milo played football.

Recently, George had suggested they sell two of the shops as they were finding it hard to buy in enough good-quality antiques to stock four outlets. The business was still turning over a small profit but it was largely being eaten up by running expenses. Fewer shops would increase the profitability of the remaining, and as they owned the freehold to all them, it would release capital for them to live on.

It had seemed a good idea at the time, but now the knowledge that Steve had been defrauded of the money made Leonie toss and turn for hours. There was nothing else for it, she’d have to earn money to add to their income. She would have to learn to stand on her own feet. If she didn’t, life was going to be desperately hard for them all.

BY THE TIME THE ALARM went the next morning, Leonie was in a heavy sleep, but she had to get the children up for school and make them breakfast. Steve didn’t get up with them on school mornings because the noise and the rushing about gave him a headache.

Today, she made boiled eggs with toast and a pot of tea for the children and herself. She was pleased to see them come silently to the table dressed in their school uniforms.

They went to different schools although both caught the same bus. Milo’s school was further on than June’s and he’d been going on his own for some time before she started. In order to save the cost of her own bus fare, Leonie soon gave him the responsibility of seeing June got off at the right stop.

Steve’s daily copy of The Times was delivered to a box at the back gate. June had taken on the job of collecting it and running back with it for her father, before she went to catch the bus.

When Leonie waved them off at the back door and there was peace in the house again, she poured herself a second cup of tea and set about preparing the same breakfast for Steve. She set his breakfast tray and took it to the bedroom. As always, he’d put on his bedside light to read his newspaper. Usually he was still half asleep but this morning he looked agitated.

‘This is terrible,’ he told her. ‘I told you last night we’d lost a lot of money but this is an absolute calamity. This on top of everything else will ruin me.’ He was sitting bolt upright. When she tried to settle his breakfast tray across his knees he waved it away.

‘Look at this.’ He pushed the newspaper across the bed towards her.

With sinking heart she asked, ‘What’s happened?’

‘There’s been a financial slump in America.’ He spoke rapidly. ‘People are throwing themselves out of skyscrapers in New York because they’ve lost all their money on the stock market.’

Leonie wasn’t sure how that affected them. New York seemed a long way away. ‘You might as well eat your breakfast while it’s hot.’

‘Don’t you understand what I’m saying? The London stock market has crashed too. Last night’s prices are printed here and it looks as though I’ve lost a packet. I must get up and phone William Hawkes.’

‘He won’t be at his desk this early. Eat your breakfast.’

‘He’ll probably have been in his office all night.’ He swung away on his crutches to do it.

Leonie picked up the newspaper and sat down to read.

Steve soon came back and slumped on the bed. ‘You’re right, he’s not in his office.’ Leonie lifted his breakfast tray across his legs. He looked fraught. ‘What are we going to do now? As if we haven’t got enough trouble without this. I’ve probably lost the last few pounds Dad left me.’

Leonie sighed. ‘I wouldn’t worry about losing all the money. You’ll still have the shares, they’ll just be worth less and you’ll still get the same dividends.’

‘I doubt that when shareholders are committing suicide in New York.’

‘Yes, but it says in the paper that those people were borrowing money to buy shares because the market was going up and up. They were greedy, expecting to make a fortune, but instead the market has collapsed and their shares are worth less than the amount they borrowed to buy them. You haven’t done anything like that.’

‘But they’ll certainly be worth less than they were last week.’

‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘I couldn’t get to sleep last night. I spent the time pondering what I could do to earn some money. We aren’t going to have enough to live on.’

He was irritable. ‘You don’t need to tell me that!’

‘I thought I might set myself up as a dressmaker.’

‘What d’you mean?’ He was full of suspicion. In Steve’s family the women didn’t work.

‘I could make clothes for other people – anybody who’ll pay me for doing it.’

‘I can’t let you do that.’ He was horrified.

‘I enjoy sewing, you know I do, and I’ve always made my own clothes and those for the children. It seems sensible to use the skills I have. I already have a large sewing room to work in and Aunt Felicity’s treadle machine, and there’s plenty more space in the house if I should need it.’

‘You’ll never earn enough to make it worthwhile.’ He screwed up his face, showing his abhorrence.

‘It’ll take me time to build it up but I love fashion and Aunt Felicity earned her living that way.’ Steve had rather looked down on her for doing that. ‘She taught me a lot about the trade. I think it’s my best bet.’

‘Leonie, nobody has much money to spend on clothes these days. You’ll hardly earn anything. I could try going back to work. George will find me a job in the office if I ask him.’

Leonie turned to stare out through the big Victorian bay window and across the Mersey estuary. This morning it looked grey and misty but it was always busy with small coasters bustling up and down, each with thick black smoke pouring from its funnel. And of course there were the ferry boats crisscrossing the river, but unfortunately for Steve, the service no longer came to New Ferry.

In 1922, the same severe gale that had blown down a tree in their garden had caused a steamer to run into the end of the pier. It did so much damage that the pier had had to be demolished and the ferry service closed, thus bringing to an end the pleasant and convenient way of travelling to Liverpool that Steve’s forebears had enjoyed.

The parade of shops leading down to the pier lost much of their custom and the post office closed, turning the district into an increasingly shabby backwater. The middle-class merchants who had once occupied the neighbouring large houses had moved to other districts. Some of the houses had been split up and were now occupied by more than one family.

That and the coming of the motor car had put out of business the commercial stable that had once plied for trade almost at their back gate. Steve had never owned a car or learned to drive. There was a good bus service into town but it was an eight- or ten-minute walk to the bus stop on the New Chester Road and Steve could not walk far. It was hardly practical for him to think of going back to work, especially as it was some years since he’d done so. Leonie was afraid he’d do again what he’d done so often in the past. He’d take on a job with good intentions but a morning would come when he’d feel unwell and just stay in bed.

Leonie made up her mind. Whatever Steve thought of the idea, she intended to try dressmaking. She would advertise in the local paper, put cards in nearby newsagents’ windows and put a notice on the back gate inviting would-be customers to the door to ring the bell.

She set about reorganising her sewing room and found it exciting to have something different in her life. She went out and bought a new oil heater because it would be cold to sew in there in the winter. They were reduced to one coal fire in the dining room which had come to be used as a general living room.

Steve couldn’t eat his breakfast. He slid the tray over to Leonie’s side of the bed and stared out of the window at the view he’d known since childhood. Those had been sunlit years for him and his family, but the war had changed all that.

He was fated. No matter how hard he tried, everything went wrong. Everybody gave up on him. Dad had decided George Courtney was a better man to run the firm, and now Leonie was going to take over as the family breadwinner. He felt reduced to nothing. He was superfluous here; he wished he’d been killed in France, at least they’d remember him as a hero.

His eye was caught by a coaster chugging upriver, leaving a trail of smoke. The Mersey tide was full in and slapping against the wall of the Esplanade; he never tired of watching life out there. He craned his neck to see the two old ships moored permanently in the Sloyne, an area of deep water just to the right of their window.

The Conway was a handsome nineteenth-century black and white wooden ship that had started life as HMS Nile and was now a school for training officers for the merchant navy. The other, the Indefatigable, was an iron ship, now a school for training the orphans of seamen for a life before the mast. Nothing much seemed to be happening on either of them at the moment.

As Steve saw it, life was hell and set to get worse, they were going to be as poor as church mice. He should be thankful he still had Leonie. At least she still loved him, even though everybody else had given up on him.

Over supper that evening, it brought him more pain to hear her talk of plans to add to the family income. He thought it highly unlikely she’d earn much, particularly as she’d started by buying a new oil heater.

‘That’s an unnecessary expense,’ he told her. ‘There’s an oil heater in the old servants’ quarters in the cellar that you could have used.’

Milo looked up from his mutton chop. ‘Is there? If Mum doesn’t need it, I’d like to take it to the summer house. Can I have it, Pa?’

‘No,’ Steve retorted. ‘It’s too dangerous. You’ll set the place on fire and burn it down.’

At twel