Violet's Children

by Maureen Lee

Genres: Sagas

Synopsis

A powerful, heart-warming new novel from the author of The Seven Streets of Liverpool and The Kelly Sisters. Liverpool, 1950. They say you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family. Yet when Violet Duffy is asked to give a home to the orphaned children of a distant relative, it is precisely the choice she must face. Abby and Will have had young lives full of tragedy. Violet offers love and safety. But as they grow up, their past won't let them be. Turning into teenagers makes them curious about life beyond the Liverpool streets. Will they choose Violet, or the lure of bigger cities and new horizons? Private passions, tough choices, lost loves and second chances pull them in different directions, but wherever life takes them, the door is always open at Amber Street – after all, it's love that makes a house a home. Maureen Lee is a British novelist of one hundred and fifty short-stories and dramatic historical romance novels. Maureen's novels will appeal to the fans of Nadine Dorries and Rosie Goodwin.

Release date: May 14, 2019

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 388

Sample

Chapter 1

Liverpool, 1950

She was on her way home from work. The letter was on her knee in her navy-blue, patent-leather handbag. Violet rubbed a faint spot off the side with her gloved hand before clicking it open. There wasn’t much inside: a small diary with a pencil tucked into the spine, rosary beads in a little felt pouch, her mother’s cracked leather purse that she’d had ever since Violet could remember, a perfectly ironed white hanky with an embroidered corner, and a comb and hand mirror that had been in the bag when it was bought. Today, because it was Friday, there was also a wage packet containing eighteen pounds, four shillings and sixpence – and the letter. It had been in the packet with the wages and was still folded into four. Violet hadn’t yet read it.

She caught her breath. The money was exactly twice her usual wage and the only reason she could think of for having been paid so much was that she’d been sacked with immediate effect, and the extra money was in lieu of a week’s notice.

‘You’re a terrible pessimist, Violet.’ Her mother’s voice came to her from across the years. ‘With you, the glass is always half empty, never half full.’ If Mam were alive, she’d say the extra money might be a bonus, a reward for Violet’s hard work for more than three decades. ‘Or perhaps they’ve given you a rise, luv.’

‘They’d never double me wages, Mam.’ Violet carried on the imaginary conversation inside her head.

‘Oh, all right, maybe not,’ Mam conceded, ‘but they’d never sack you, either. You’ve been with Briggs’ Motors since you was fourteen, girl, when the place was no more than a shed. Now you’re secretary to the managing director and it’s one of the biggest firms in Liverpool. Norman Larkin thinks the world of you. So stop being such an old misery guts and cheer up.’

The trouble with talking to a dead person was they weren’t aware of the full facts. Mam had passed away only a few months before the war had ended. Unless there was a way of receiving messages in heaven, she wouldn’t know that Norman Larkin had gone to meet his own maker only last year and Douglas Penny had been appointed in his place. Douglas was an ex-Royal Air Force officer with a ridiculous moustache and a dead posh voice – ‘As if he had a plum in his gob,’ as Violet’s mam would have said. He didn’t bother to hide his resentment of inheriting a secretary as old and unattractive as Violet. He was quite openly having an affair with Beryl Daly – more commonly known as the ‘blonde bombshell’ – who worked in the typing pool. Violet wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to hear that very soon, in fact as early as next week, Beryl, with her bright yellow hair, long red fingernails and enormous bosom, had moved into the little office next to the managing director’s that Violet had occupied for so long.

If the truth be known, she’d been half expecting the letter ever since Douglas Penny had been installed as managing director of Briggs’ Motors. Now it had come, but she wouldn’t read it until she got home, had lit the fire, made a cup of tea and was sitting in her mother’s armchair with Sammy, her handsome tabby cat, both watching the fire take hold. She needed to be somewhere friendly and familiar when she learnt she’d lost her job in the only place she’d worked in her life.

‘Goodnight, Miss Duffy,’ said a girlish voice.

Violet looked up. Sheila Hollis, one of Briggs’ Motors’ telephonists, was smiling shyly at her. ‘Goodnight, Sheila.’ She managed to smile back. She had forgotten for the moment that she was on the works bus – surprising, really, when it was exceptionally noisy today, another consequence of its being Friday. There was a disjointed singsong on the top deck, and a heated argument about the comparative merits of Everton and Liverpool football teams being carried on downstairs where Violet sat. She didn’t doubt that everyone on board was actively looking forward to the weekend – to the dances, the football, the shopping, or just a couple of days off work and some extra hours in bed.

‘Let’s hope the weather stays this nice,’ Sheila said as she stood and waited for the bus to stop. It was mid-April, half past five, lovely and sunny, and unnaturally warm for the time of year – too warm for the fire she had planned. Violet decided she would light it all the same.

The windows of the bus were thick with condensation and the air full of cigarette smoke that had drifted down from upstairs. ‘Goodnight, Miss Duffy,’ said a different voice, a man this time speaking in a silly falsetto.

Violet didn’t answer, just wondered why being Miss rather than Mrs made her the butt of so many jokes from the workers, always men. Unlike married women, spinsters of a certain age were regarded as figures of fun. She sank back into her earlier reverie, wondering about the letter, and came to only when the bus stopped by Marsh Lane Station – Bootle being its ultimate destination – and the passengers remaining got off, herself among them. Violet sighed audibly, threw back her shoulders and marched along Amber Street to the house where, forty-six years ago, she had been born.



Dear Miss Duffy, the letter began, I would respectfully advise you that, due to circumstances beyond our control, your position as secretary to the managing director will be terminated as from today. Your salary for this week is enclosed with this letter, plus a further week’s salary in lieu of notice.

I would like to thank you for your long service to the company and wish you good luck in your future employment. A reference will be provided if required.

The letter was signed by Robert Hill, Personnel Manager, another newcomer to Briggs’ Motors.

Violet sank back in the armchair and the letter fluttered to the floor. Sammy was perched on the back of the chair purring loudly. Her worst fears had been realised. On Monday morning, there’d be no need to set the alarm for a quarter to seven, put on the clothes that she’d left neatly folded on a chair the night before, eat her usual cornflakes, then make her way to Marsh Lane Station in order to catch the special bus to Briggs’ Motors on the East Lancashire Road.

Her heart was beating so loudly and so violently, she felt sure it was about to burst out of her breast. The factory had become as much part of her existence as the place where she lived and the church where she prayed. She couldn’t visualise life without it.

For a while, she wandered around the house, upstairs and down, opening drawers and looking in cupboards, without any idea why. Sammy followed her on her useless journey, rubbing himself against her legs. Apart from the unnecessary fire crackling in the grate, everywhere was unnaturally quiet. Even the Harrisons next door, who usually sounded as if they were chopping down trees, were strangely subdued, as if they’d heard about Violet’s bad news and were being understanding for once.

She looked out of the window of her bedroom. According to the alarm clock it was past eight. The sinking sun was still shining and the street was full of people, mainly women sitting on their steps and children playing – the men would have filled the pubs by now. Violet sighed. She was friendly with the neighbours, but had never made a habit of sitting outside. With her job gone, she felt lost and terribly alone, even more so than when Mam died – that at least was God’s will, not an act of spite or an injustice.

She sighed again, moved away from the window and opened the wardrobe that was still full of her mother’s clothes. She was assailed by the smell of mothballs and began to cry, wishing with all her loudly beating heart that Mam were still alive. Mam would threaten to go to Briggs’ Motors and tear the management apart, limb by limb, then stamp on their hearts. Violet was desperately in need of sympathy, even if it was in the form of murderous threats from a frail old lady who’d been too sick to leave the house towards the end. For what might have been the thousandth time in her life, she wished she had brothers and sisters, that she hadn’t been an only child.

She buried her face in her mother’s plaid dressing gown. ‘What am I going to do, Mam?’ she whispered.

‘Pull yourself together, girl,’ Mam would have urged. ‘Don’t forget the old saying, “As one door closes, another opens.” You’ll soon find another job.’

Violet rather doubted she would get one all that easily. She’d like to bet that jobs for forty-seven-year-old women didn’t grow on trees. Reference or no reference, what reason could she give for having left her old job after so many years? Telling the truth would just sound like sour grapes.

She wiped her face on the dressing gown sleeve and went downstairs. At the bottom, she caught sight of herself in the full-length mirror in the hall: a tall, thin woman, hair neatly waved, smartly dressed in a brown tweed skirt and long-sleeved blouse a slightly lighter brown, a woman sometimes described as ‘handsome’, though Violet would have preferred ‘attractive’. Tonight, the woman looked unnaturally pale – or perhaps she always had, but hadn’t cared before, or hadn’t noticed. Her face was completely free of wrinkles. Why, then, did she look so old? Old and tired, Violet thought, as she viewed her face from different angles. It was entirely devoid of character, rather flat, a turned-down mouth, dead eyes. She forced herself to smile, but it was so false that it made her look slightly insane.

Her entire life had been recorded in this mirror. Her first memory was of her father carrying her downstairs and Violet, still a toddler, reaching out to touch her reflected self when they reached the hall.

‘That’s you, pet,’ Dad had said, or something like it. It was one of the few memories of her father that she had. A dockworker, not long afterwards he’d died of a mysterious illness caught while unloading a boat laden with fruit from somewhere in Africa. The boat had been quarantined and sent back to where it came from and Mam had received a small pension from the shipping company for the rest of her life.

There’d been many more Violets in the mirror, nearly half a century of them: dressed in white with a little veil for her First Holy Communion; in the sensible dark-blue frocks that Mam had made for school; at sixteen wearing stockings for the first time, suspenders pressing painfully against her thighs; wearing her one and only evening frock, navy-blue satin with cap sleeves and a sequinned collar – she was very fond of navy blue. She’d worn the frock numerous times during the war at the dances held in the factory canteen to raise funds for the war effort. Briggs’ Motors had turned to making cars and spare parts for the army and the factory had buzzed with excitement.

Violet sank down on the stairs and rested her chin in her hands – the woman in the mirror did the same. She felt terrible for missing the war so much. All the men who’d died fighting, the people who’d been killed in the bombing – Bootle, so close to the docks, had been one of the main targets of Hitler’s bombs. Yet Violet had felt wholly alive for the first and only time in her life, helping Norman with the company’s dances, going with Norman and his wife, Betty, and Crocker, the American officer Norman had become friends with in the First World War and who was now in England for another one. She and Betty had organised fêtes in the garden of their big house in Rainford, raising money for the Spitfire Fund, Tanks for Russia Week and all sorts of other wartime charities, while her mother had joined the Women’s Voluntary Service, despite being so sick, and held weekly meetings in the parlour. The house had felt empty ever since; it felt even emptier today.

She jumped up when the front-door key was dragged on its string through the letterbox; the door was opened and a woman came in.

To her relief, it was Madge McGann, and, if there was one person in the world she would like to see right now, it was her friend Madge, who lived just around the corner in Pearl Street. She looked surprised.

‘Were you standing just inside the door waiting for someone to knock?’ she enquired. She made her way into the living room and threw herself into a chair. ‘That bloody television,’ she grumbled, running her fingers through her brilliant red hair. ‘I wish we’d never got it. You’ll never believe it, but when I arrived home from work I found a queue waiting outside me very own door. Bob had only invited them; there’s something on tonight to do with the footy and every single man in Bootle is jammed in our front parlour to watch. It’s standing room only – I’ve run out of bloody chairs. If I don’t want to watch telly and sit on the floor, the only alternative is to stand in the kitchen or sit on the bed upstairs.’

‘Well, there’s plenty of room to sit in this house,’ Violet assured her. ‘There’s not a single chair occupied.’ She went into the kitchen to put the kettle on for tea. At Christmas, Madge’s husband, Bob, had won over a hundred quid on the pools and bought one of those new-fangled television sets, but Madge had decreed it a curse ever since.

‘Jaysus, Vi,’ Madge said, having discovered the brightly burning fire. ‘It’s like a hothouse in here. What d’you think you are, a tomato, or something?’ She lifted Sammy onto her knee. ‘I advise you never to buy a telly, girl,’ she said. ‘You’ll end up with dozens of visitors who’ve never been near the place before, but they haven’t come to see you, but the bloody telly.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of buying one,’ Violet assured her. ‘Though I must say I enjoyed that Come Dancing programme that we watched the other night. The dresses were dead pretty.’

‘Oh, it’s not the telly that’s at fault: it’s the flaming audience. The thing is, you can’t keep a telly a secret, not with that ugly aerial thing stuck on the bloody chimney for everyone to see. Mind you, Bob’s told so many people we’ve got one, he may as well have stuck an advert in the Liverpool Echo.’

The kettle was rattling on the stove. Violet went out to make the tea. When she came back, Madge had removed her high-heeled black shoes and was massaging her feet. ‘These shoes crucify me,’ she muttered. Her legs were long and shapely and her stockings a daring smoky colour. Madge was three months older than Violet and they’d known each other since they were in the same class at infant school. At eighteen, an incredibly pretty and glamorous Madge had married Bob McGann and had gone on to have five daughters, while Violet, plainly dressed and not nearly so pretty, had ended up in Briggs’ Motors as secretary to Norman Larkin, not that she’d minded.

Now all Madge’s daughters were married and rapidly producing grandchildren, Madge worked as a supervisor at Scotts’ Bakery, while Violet no longer had a job.

‘Why do you wear shoes like that if they hurt?’ she asked.

‘Because they’re dead glamorous and make me legs look a nicer shape.’ She put the shoes back on, admiring the effect as she turned her feet one way and the other. ‘It’s about time you bought yourself a pair of high heels, Violet, rather than those clumpy Cuban things you’re wearing now.’ She gave her friend the same impatient yet affectionate look she’d been giving her for the last forty years. ‘Anyroad, I’m off to the pictures in a mo and on the way home I’ll call in The Butcher’s for a drink. The mob round our house aren’t likely to bugger off till all hours and I’ve no intention of hanging around until they do. I didn’t tell Bob I was going,’ she continued bitterly, ‘so he’s probably thinking I’ll come bursting into the parlour any minute with a tray of ice creams hanging round me neck. If so, he’s got another thing coming.’

‘Are you going to the pub for a drink all by yourself?’ Violet asked. The Butcher’s was by Marsh Lane Station and had a bad reputation.

‘I am that.’ Madge crossed her long legs impatiently. ‘I’ve no one else to go with.’

‘Won’t Bob mind?’ Violet ignored the comment. She had no intention of going in a pub with only another woman.

‘Huh!’ Madge lit a cigarette and waved it around as if she were sending smoke signals. Sammy watched intently, wondering if this was a new sort of game. ‘Of course he’ll mind. In fact, he’d do his bloody nut if he found out, but I don’t care. In fact, I’ll tell him to his face. We always said once the girls got married, left home, and we didn’t have to support them any more, we’d have a good time. We’d have nothing else to spend our money on except ourselves. Instead, all he does is watch television along with half the male population of Bootle, and I’m not even left with a sodden chair to sit on. I say, Vi,’ she continued without a pause, ‘would you like a waste-paper basket for Christmas?’

‘Eh?’ Violet looked at her stupidly.

Madge laughed for the first time since she’d arrived. ‘There’s a letter lying underneath your chair. It’s from Briggs’ Motors, I can see that much from here. This is the tidiest house I’ve ever known. You’re letting the side down, girl.’

Violet reached under the chair and picked the letter up. It was hard to believe, but listening to Madge and her problem with the telly, she’d temporarily forgotten her own troubles. She hesitated a moment before handing the letter to her friend. ‘You’d better read this,’ she said.

‘Jaysus, Violet!’ Madge gasped a minute later. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? Why let me jabber on and on about that stupid, soddin’ telly when you had this on your mind? Now I feel dead ashamed. What are the “circumstances beyond our control” that this creep’s on about?’

Violet shrugged. ‘There aren’t any,’ she said wearily. ‘It’s just an excuse to get rid of me so Douglas Penny can install Beryl Daly as his secretary.’ Madge knew all about Beryl Daly, the blonde bombshell. ‘Don’t tell anyone, will you, Madge? I don’t want the whole world knowing I’m out of a job.’

‘Jaysus!’ Madge said again. She flung the letter back on the floor and stamped on it. ‘The whole world should know,’ she cried indignantly. ‘You’re a lovely person, Violet, and it’s just not fair. Norman Larkin would turn in his grave if he knew what had happened. As for your mam, she’d spin like a flamin’ top until she’d drilled herself out of her flamin’ coffin.’

At this, Violet couldn’t help but smile. ‘She would indeed,’ she murmured.

‘If you’re short of cash, I can always tide you over with a few bob a week until you get another job,’ Madge offered.

‘Thanks, but I’ll be all right.’ Violet was touched by her friend’s generosity, but Briggs’ Motors had paid her a good wage as secretary to the managing director, which meant that Mam had hardly needed to touch her pension. She had died with over fifty pounds in her Post Office account. It would be a long time before Violet would have to get a job for financial reasons, though the last thing she wanted was to sit at home by herself day after day. Her spirits drooped at the thought; she would far sooner be at work.



The first half of the night was full of nightmares. Violet kept waking up with a start and taking ages to fall asleep again. At about half past three she remembered the cough medicine Mam used to take that she swore worked miracles. Morphia, it was called, and it made her sleep easier than any of the pills from the doctor. There were two unopened bottles in the kitchen cupboard above the sink. She crept downstairs, took two teaspoonfuls and brought the bottle back with her to bed. Sammy appeared from nowhere and jumped onto the bed with her. She still woke up at a quarter to seven in time for work even though the alarm hadn’t gone off, but at least she’d had three undisturbed hours of sleep. She remembered it was Saturday and she wouldn’t have had to go to work anyway. Saturday was the day she did the housework.

Another three hours later, Violet had done the washing and it was hanging on the rack in the kitchen; the furniture in the parlour and the living room had been polished, the lino brushed, and the mats beaten in the yard. She had just made a pot of tea – she was dying for a cup – when there was a knock on the door. She could tell by the knock that it wasn’t Madge, or Ernie Randolph, her other next-door neighbour, who always knocked three times, very slowly, in a doomladen way as if he were the bearer of bad news. Ena Hamilton, on the other side, who was always in a hurry, just kept knocking until the door was opened, whereupon she would ask Violet if she could borrow a cup of sugar, a drop of milk, or a penny for the gas meter. Violet would get the penny back, but never the sugar or the milk.

Her visitor was entirely unexpected. Violet found Iris Gunn, head of the typing pool at Briggs’ Motors, on her doorstep. Iris had never been to the house before.

‘Come on in,’ Violet gasped. ‘You’re the last person I expected to see. Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve just made some.’ She apologised for her old frock and the fact that she smelled of furniture polish and Tide washing powder. ‘Sat’days are me day for cleaning,’ she explained.

‘Oh, Violet, you look fine, luv, and you smell lovely and clean.’ Iris grabbed her arm. ‘I’ve just come to say how sorry I am about what’s happened and what are we going to do about it?’

‘Do about it?’ She nudged her visitor towards a chair and sat down herself. She’d always got the impression that Iris didn’t like her very much, that she looked down on her more than a bit. A tiny, delicate widow of about fifty with bouncy grey curls and the face of a middle-aged doll, she was surprisingly loud and extrovert, while Violet was quiet and retiring. They’d never been what you’d call friends, despite Violet being secretary to the managing director and Iris head of the typing pool since just before the war, the two most senior women in the firm.

‘Well, there’ll be hell to pay on Monday when word gets round that you’ve been given the push,’ Iris stated angrily.

‘Will there?’ Violet felt dazed.

‘There most certainly will.’ Iris struck the arm of the chair with her small fist. ‘Perhaps you don’t realise just how fond people are of you, luv, and how much they hate Douglas Penny. What he’s done to you is despicable: getting rid of a really hardworking, longstanding employee in favour of his girlfriend, that flighty bitch Beryl Daly. I thought she looked even more pleased with herself than usual on Friday night before we went home. It wasn’t until I was on the bus that I was told what had happened.’ Iris lived on the south side of Liverpool and caught a different bus from Violet. ‘Ben Cousins from Wages told me – you know, the chap who lost his foot in the war. He said you’d been given a letter of dismissal. He was just as disgusted as I am and he said everyone in Wages feels the same.’

Violet was about to say, ‘Do they?’ in the same dazed voice, but she was making herself look a fool. ‘Well, it did come as a bit of a shock,’ she admitted, though it hadn’t really – not a complete shock. She’d been half expecting it for months.

‘I think we should all go on strike until you’re reinstated,’ Iris said in a fierce voice. ‘After all, we’ve not long finished fighting for our freedom, there’s a socialist government in power, and we can’t have jumped-up creatures like that Penny chap flexing his upper-class muscles and throwi. . .