The Cobbler's Kids Read online

  ‘Given time, we’ll have our own little football team,’ he announced proudly when, a year after Edmund was born, Annie was pregnant once again.

  This time it was a little girl. Vera Quinn was born on 1st May 1909. A plump, contented baby, she had her mother’s fine features, but her father’s eyes and jet-black hair.

  ‘She’ll be a real beauty when she gets older,’ Michael announced happily.

  There was no doubt at all that she was the apple of his eye. He picked her up and nursed her the minute he came in from work. He would even carry her down the street in his arms, showing her off to anyone who expressed the slightest interest.

  Annie worried that the two boys might become jealous, but they seemed to accept her arrival in their lives. They had each other to play with and Annie made sure that they had plenty of attention from her whenever Mike was cuddling Vera.

  She was expecting again when war was declared, but the shock of Michael dashing off to serve his country caused her such distress that no one was surprised when she miscarried.

  ‘You mustn’t worry about it, Annie. You’ve got quite enough on your plate as it is with three youngsters, my dear,’ her mother told her.

  She didn’t fret; in fact she felt a sense of relief. She silently agreed with her mother that three children were quite enough to cope with, especially with Michael being away in the army.

  As the years passed, despite a great many shortages as a result of the war, the children seemed to be happy enough and to grow apace and Annie felt quite contented with her life. With all the children at school, and her own mother willing to be there for them when they came home, Annie was even able to go back to work for two days a week. She saved this extra money, hoping that they could have a family holiday when Michael was eventually demobbed.

  It was early 1919 before he was discharged, though, and by that time an influenza epidemic was sweeping across Europe, so a holiday was out of the question. Charlie, as well as both her parents, were ill.

  She still found it hard to believe that all three of them died within days of each other. At the time she’d felt as if her entire world had collapsed. In a way, it had. The happy days with her own mother and father supporting her had gone for ever.

  She was in such a daze that she left it to Michael to settle up her parents’ affairs. When he told her that they were moving to Liverpool, and that he was setting up his own business, she made no protest at all.

  What did it matter where she lived. Her parents were gone and so, too, was one of her little boys. There seemed to be so much sorrow in her life that she didn’t even ask Michael where he was getting the money from to rent his own shop, or even care that it was in Liverpool on the other side of the Mersey.

  It wasn’t until many months later that she realised that in order to set up on his own Michael had sold all her parents’ possessions, every single thing they had ever owned. He hadn’t even kept a picture, an ornament, or a piece of her mother’s jewellery for her to have as a keepsake.

  Chapter Two

  No one knew better than Michael Quinn how much the army had changed him since his days as a raw recruit in 1914.

  When the other men in his unit found out that he came from Merseyside they immediately wanted to know if he was a Wallasey boy. He couldn’t understand the jeers, the laughter and the nudges when he readily admitted that he was. It was only later that he found out that being termed a ‘Wallasey Boy’ meant they thought he was homosexual.

  He had lived through a similar scenario because of his good looks when he’d been in the orphanage. He didn’t relish a repeat of the torment he’d endured then so he tried to blend into the background.

  The moment he completed his square-bashing though, he started working hard to gain his stripes. It had taken six months to get his lance corporal tab, but from the moment he did he was relieved to find that he had earned himself a degree of respect. There were no more jibes, at least not within earshot.

  When he was finally made a full corporal his life changed completely. He was in charge. No one could sneer or guffaw after that. Those who had already done so quickly felt the weight of his authority. He handed out so much punishment that he was the most feared NCO in the regiment.

  After that, there was no turning back. He’d heard the saying that ‘power corrupts’ and he supposed that in a way it had that effect on him.

  He could still charm his superiors when it suited him to do so, but he was no longer the easy-going, smiling chap he’d tried to be from the moment he’d met Annie.

  Being away from his wife and kids had put that relationship into perspective as well. The world was a harsh place. He was living in dangerous times, balancing on the knife-edge of survival, experiencing hunger, pain and fear. He’d seen his comrades die. Having survived the mud and bullets of battle he vowed that in future he would put himself first, even before his family.

  Once he was back home, he was annoyed to see how protective Annie was, how she coddled their children. Edmund, in particular, irritated him so much that he couldn’t bear to look at him. He was such a short, skinny kid, and, what was worse, he always had his nose in a book or comic. He was not the sort of lad he could be proud to say was his son. He wanted his boys to be tough enough to hold their own in the school playground or out in the street. Boys should know how to use their fists to defend themselves.

  He intended to knock Edmund into shape, even though this meant he’d have to fight with Annie as well. Not long after Michael had arrived home he’d tried to teach Edmund to box, but he just hid behind his mother’s skirts.

  ‘Leave the lad alone! It’s not his nature to be aggressive,’ Annie had told him sharply.

  ‘He’ll need to learn to stand up for himself now he’s living in this area. The lads in school will pick on him, especially when they hear he’s from Wallasey.’

  He’d tried to explain to her what was meant by the term ‘a Wallasey boy’, but she’d been disgusted and gave him a right earful.

  From that moment on their relationship had turned sour. She’d learned over the past years how to bring up her children without a father. Michael had been away for over four years, and now she felt that she no longer needed or even wanted to listen to him, nor did she welcome his attentions.

  When, within a couple of months of his homecoming, she found she was pregnant again, she expressed such anger that he’d seen red and slapped her across the face almost without thinking.

  Instead of cowering back, she had turned on him like an alley cat.

  ‘Don’t you ever do that again,’ she’d hissed. ‘This is the last baby you’re going to foist on me, understand?’

  Sensing danger he’d turned on the charm. ‘What about that football team we were going to produce,’ he joked.

  ‘This is my last baby and I don’t care whether it is a boy or a girl, you won’t be fathering any more. You’ve changed so much that I hardly know you. You’re no longer the man I married. There’s no tenderness or kindness left in you. You’re drunk with your own power and nothing but a great bully. You might be able to browbeat Edmund and Vera, but you’ll never intimidate me.’

  Her tone was icy and the look of hatred in her eyes scared him as much as anything he had experienced in his very worst moments in France. He knew she was right. His whole attitude to life and to other people, even his wife and children, was different.

  To this day he didn’t truly understand what had happened to him when war was declared in August 1914. All he knew was that he couldn’t wait to join up. It was as if he had waited all his life for this moment. He felt needed, eager to be in the thick of the fighting. He thought he could take on the enemy and sort them out, single-handed if necessary. It seemed he’d reached a crisis point. He’d blindly abandoned both his job and his family, and rushed along to the recruiting office.

  He’d been confident, of course, that Annie’s father, James Simmonds would keep an eye on Annie and the children. He was far too old to be calle
d up and so he’d be there for them whether the war took a month or even a year.

  He’d never expected it to be more than four years until he was back home again. Or that he would undergo a complete change in his outlook on life, indeed, a metamorphosis of his entire personality.

  From the Liverpool recruiting office he was sent off with about fifty others to the training barracks, kitted out in khaki and drilled by a bullying sergeant until he marched automatically and jumped to attention almost before an order was bellowed out. He would never forget the pride he had felt when they were sent by train to London and marched five-abreast through the city to Victoria station on their way to embark for France.

  By October 1914 he was at Ypres, living in a muddy trench and experiencing first-hand what it meant to ‘go over the top’ when every nerve in your body was screaming with fear. The casualties were alarming. Later on there was an even greater hazard to be faced when the enemy started using gas.

  His family was rarely in his thoughts; he was too busy concentrating on his army duties and his own survival. Verdun, the Somme, and then back again to Ypres.

  Whilst the majority of his companions were maimed or killed he came through the many campaigns virtually unscathed. It was as if he had some invisible form of protection. The only thing he suffered throughout those terrible years of war was a change of personality. He was no longer the mild suburban family man. He’d reverted to the hard, wily character who’d learned to face the hardships of growing up in an orphanage and to fight for his place in life.

  He built up such an inner reserve of strength that, unlike others in the same campaigns, he was never sent home for falling victim to stress, shell shock or war fatigue. The greater the bombardment, the more resolute he seemed to be. Everyone told him, his ‘luck’ would run out one day. He’d be another statistic. He proved them all wrong. He was still on active service, proudly wearing his two stripes, when peace was finally declared on 11th November 1918.

  He was moved around and delayed so much prior to his final demob that he’d not heard from Annie for several months. It hadn’t worried him. It was only a matter of time before he would be home for good, then he’d be able to do all the catching up necessary.

  Returning to Merseyside would be an anticlimax. Having been in charge of other men he knew he could never stand being servile to a boss ever again. It wasn’t going to be easy explaining to Annie that he wanted to be his own boss so the longer he could put off doing so the better.

  He certainly hadn’t expected to become embroiled in the tragic situation that faced him soon after he arrived home. He’d known that the influenza outbreak that had swept right through Europe at the end of 1918 had reached pandemic proportions, but he hadn’t realised that any of his immediate family had been caught up in it.

  After seeing so many men die in battle he would never have believed that he could feel so devastated. He was sorry that Annie’s parents, James and Emma Simmonds, had died, but they were getting on in years so it had to be accepted that they would have died sometime in the near future. It was Charlie’s death that affected him so badly. Charlie! His first born. The boy he was so proud of because he was the spitting image of himself.

  Annie was so distraught by her parents’ and their son’s death that he’d automatically taken charge. The skills he had developed from handling difficult situations while he’d been in the army stood him in good stead for sorting out a new future for them all. By ruthlessly disposing of all of his in-laws’s possessions, and most of their own furnishings, he raised the capital to start up in business as an independent cobbler.

  It was as if all the dreams and ambitions he’d built up in his mind while he had been in the trenches in France were coming to fruition. It was a challenge, of course, and one he felt should be tackled in new surroundings, so that they all made a complete break from their past.

  Crossing the Mersey to Liverpool seemed to be an ideal solution. As a result of the police riots that had centred in Scotland Road during the summer of 1919, there were plenty of vacant shops with living accommodation which were being rented out very cheaply in that area. It meant that there was enough money left to buy stock to set himself up as an independent cobbler.

  His war years had accustomed him to living rough so he never stopped to think that Annie and the kids might find it a hardship to move from their quiet little backwater in Wallasey to a place like Scotland Road.

  At the time, Annie had showed little interest. ‘I don’t care where we live,’ she had said dismissively when he’d told her their new address. ‘No matter where it is Charlie won’t be with us, nor will my mother and father.’

  He’d tried to be sympathetic, but he’d seen so many of his mates die over the past four years that he was now hardened to such things. He was still alive and so was she and so, too, were Edmund and Vera.

  One of the biggest problems was Edmund. He wasn’t the sort of son he wanted. He was so quiet and withdrawn. Michael frequently wished that it had been Edmund, not Charlie, who’d succumbed to the influenza epidemic. Charlie had taken after him whereas, in many ways, Eddy took after Annie’s family. He was far too reserved. Whether Annie liked it or not he intended to toughen him up, ready to face the world.

  Living in Scotland Road should help put that right, Michael thought. It was the opposite of where they’d lived in Wallasey. He liked it there and felt quite at home. There were nineteen pubs in Scotland Road alone and no matter what time of the evening he went into one of them for a drink there was always someone willing to listen to his tales about what had happened in France.

  Annie had made it clear right from the moment he’d returned home from the war that she hated him going drinking, but he told her it was something she’d have to get used to. He’d become accustomed to living with men and he needed to be with them, swap yarns and enjoy their company.

  His feelings for Annie had changed. The closeness and tenderness they’d known in the old days was no longer there. He was still prepared to bed her, of course. He’d proved that by putting her in the club almost the moment he’d got home. He regarded that as being providential since a baby would help fill the gap that Charlie’s death had left. A woman is always happiest when she has a youngster to care for because it fills in their day for them, he thought wryly. He hadn’t, of course, expected the baby to be such a whingeing little bugger.

  He realised that Annie didn’t like living behind their shop in Scotland Road, but there wasn’t very much he could do about that. It was a bit rough after the little house they’d had in Wallasey, but the Simmonds had furnished that place for them and he’d sold most of it to buy the stock and machines he’d needed to get started.

  He knew he often kept Annie short of money, but it was taking time to build up a steady flow of customers. In his view she wasn’t the best of money managers. They’d lived far beyond their means when they’d been in Wallasey. James Simmonds had always been ready to slip Annie a couple of quid to buy clothes for the kids, or for a pretty dress or a new hat for herself.

  She’d also grown used to her mother dropping by most days with home-made cakes, or some other treat for the children. She missed all that help now that there was no one to indulge her.

  He kept telling Annie that the kids didn’t need all that sort of rubbish and she must use her housekeeping money for the basics. She accused him of spending too much on beer, but at the end of a long working day a man deserved a pint to wet his whistle, and the chance to have a gab with other men. The sooner she got used to his new way of living the better, as far as he was concerned.

  Chapter Three

  The moment the bell signalled the end of afternoon lessons at St Anthony’s School in Newsham Street, Vera Quinn hurried to collect her jacket from her peg in the cloakroom, anxious to get home.

  ‘Hey, wait for me, Vee!’ Her friend Rita Farthing caught up with her as she hurried across the school yard towards the iron gate.

  ‘Come on then, slowcoach, g
et a move on.’

  Linking arms, they hurried out into Newsham Street. Two best friends: one plump, round-faced, with straight brown hair and brown eyes, the other as skinny as a beanpole with jet-black hair and bright blue eyes.

  They turned left into Scotland Road and then ran helter-skelter towards the biscuit factory on the corner of Dryden Street.

  ‘I hope he’s saved something special for us today, I’m starving!’ Rita exclaimed as they reached the gatekeeper’s booth. She waved cheerily at her grandfather who controlled the barrier to the factory.

  He waved back to them, a broad smile on his whiskered face, then dived under the counter and emerged holding a brown paper bag.

  ‘I wonder what he’s got for us,’ Rita exclaimed excitedly. She disentangled her arm from Vera’s and ran forward to reach up and take the bag from her grandfather, shouting her thanks to him as they ran off down Dryden Street.

  When they came to the corner of Louis Cohen Place and turned back into Scotland Road they stopped to peer inside the bag. Their eyes widened with delight when amongst the mass of broken biscuits they spotted three whole ones which were all coated on one side with chocolate.

  ‘One each!’ Rita squealed. ‘My granddad must have put those in specially. Come on.’ She closed the bag again and grabbed at Vera’s hand. ‘If we hurry we’ll be able to catch your Eddy before he starts out on his delivery round.’

  Vera pulled back. ‘No, you go and meet Eddy, I ought to get home.’

  ‘Must you?’ Rita frowned.

  ‘If Mam’s had a bad day with Benjamin you know she’ll be waiting for me to give her a hand and look after him,’ Vera reminded her.

  ‘OK. Here, take your choccy biscuit then and a handful of the broken ones for your Benny. I’ll share the rest with Eddy when I find him.’