Welcome to Weaver Street

Chrissie Walsh

Description

If you love Katie Flynn and Pam Howes, you'll love Chrissie Walsh's WWI story of love, loss and triumph!

Kitty and Tom Conlon arrive in Liverpool in July 1916 to claim the house Tom’s great-uncle has bequeathed him in his will. The move to England couldn’t have come at a better time. Dublin is in turmoil following the Easter Uprising and Kitty’s brother is now in prison.

The house in Weaver Street is all they hoped for, and after a shaky start with her new neighbours, Kitty believes the world is her oyster. Until that is, Tom is conscripted into the navy.

With Tom away, it’s up to Kitty and the women of Weaver Street to get each other through the war.

Praise for Chrissie Walsh:'An authentic Yorkshire saga – you can almost hear the clacking of the looms. Add a feisty mill girl, determined to fight injustice, and you'll be reading through the night' Alrene Hughes, on The Girl from the Mill.

'Full of joy, sorrow and a big pinch of fun. I loved it' Elizabeth Gill, on The Child from the Ash Pits
'A captivating story of family, relations and the complexities of life. With truly heart-tugging moments that make you shed a tear. The Child from the Ash Pits is everything a good read should be' Diane Allen, on The Child from the Ash Pits
What readers say about Chrissie Walsh:'I could not fault any of this book, as the author brings all the characters to life, its such an interesting story that will engross readers all the way through. Loved it.'
'Really well written and very enjoyable, keeping the reader engrossed and gripped until the very last page.'
'Thoroughly enjoyed this book. I was engrossed from start to finish. Good strong characters, and strong storyline. Great author. I recommend.'
'The author writes so descriptively about the characters you feel you know them inside out. A brilliant read and I can’t wait for the next novel to be published.'

Sujets

• Mashups
• Conflict Resolution
• Feminist
• 20th Century
• Siblings
• Bereavement
• Historical
• HISTORY
• Women
• Dublín
• Inglaterra
• Mulberry Lane
• Friendship
• Historical romance
• Dating
• World War I
• Nadine Dorries
• Sibling
• General officer
• Ireland
• Military
• Historical fiction
• Woman
• Feminism
• The Women
• City Life
• Stephen Ireland
• General
• Grief
• Sagas
• Family Life
• War
• Romance
• England
• Saga
• Death
• Liverpool
• Fiction
• Prison
• Première Guerre mondiale
• Dublin

Informations

• Publié par: Boldwood Books
• Date de parution: 25 juillet 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781802809350
• Langue: English

Extrait

WELCOME TO WEAVER STREET

CHRISSIE WALSH

For my family.

The only way to have a friend is to be one.

? RALPH WALDO EMERSON

There is nothing on this earth more to be prized th an true friendship

? THOMAS AQUINAS

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 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42

Acknowledgments More from Chrissie Walsh About the Author About Boldwood Books

CONTENTS

1

LIVERPOOL, JDLY 1916

‘Where do we go to now?’ Kitty Conlon’s luminous ha zel eyes anxiously scanned the towering buildings on Liverpool’s Albert ock. The damp, early morning breeze snatched the tendrils of red-gold hair that had esc aped from her chignon, scribbling them across her forlorn, pretty face. She peeled th em away irritably and breathed a deep sigh, the sharp smell of salt-sea air stinging her pert, little nose. Behind her, the Belfast steam packet was still disgorging passengers who, as they streamed past Kitty, seemed to know exactly wheretheywere going. ‘The solicitor’s office in Portland Street.’ Tom Co nlon’s sharp, blue eyes had been roaming the docks. Now they settled on his wife. He smiled fondly. The voyage had been a nightmare, the steamer buffeted by squalling seas but Kitty still managed to look beautiful, her glorious, tawny hair fanning he r cheeks and her diminutive figure shapely in a bottle-green coat with a velvet collar. Kitty’s heavy bag was making her shoulder ache so s he dumped it on top of one of the two bulging suitcases Tom had set down. Whichev er way they looked, the quayside swarmed with people, lorries and carts. Overhead, g ulls swooped and mewed. ‘First, we have to find our way off the docks,’ Tom said, catching Kitty’s elbow and drawing her close as a heavily laden cart trundled past. Kitty pressed her cheek against the sleeve of his rough tweed overcoat, comforted b y his nearness. She slipped her arm round his waist, feeling the need to hold on to him, to let the warmth of his body take away the chill that shrouded her own. Tom lowered his gaze to look at her, and seeing the pallor on her cheeks, he asked, ‘Are ye all right?’ Kitty heard the concern in his voice as he folded her in his arms. She looked up into his strong, handsome face and saw no thing but love and considerateness. She gave a firm nod and a bright s mile. She mustn’t let him see how fearful she felt. ‘Then we’ll make tracks,’ he said, releasing his ho ld on her. Immediately she felt lost and vulnerable but she pushed back her shoulders an d lifted her heavy canvas bag that was stuffed to bursting with woollen shawls in case they’d had to sit out on deck, a damp flannel and a brush and comb to tidy themselve s up after spending all night at sea, plus a pair of Tom’s second best shoes that th ey hadn’t been able to cram into their overloaded suitcases. At the top of the bag w ere the remains of the sandwiches she had made before they had left ublin to travel up to Belfast to catch the steam packet. Tom had wanted to throw them to the gulls b ut Kitty, fearful of going hungry for the rest of the journey, had kept them. Tom waited while she adjusted the bag, then, pullin g the peak of his cap a little lower on his forehead, he lifted the two heavy piec es of luggage that contained the rest of their worldly possessions and set off at a brisk pace. Kitty hurried alongside, the bag bumping uncomforta bly against her hip as she struggled to match his stride, her legs still attun ed to the rocking of the boat and the nausea she had suffered on the crossing still gurgl ing in her stomach. It made her feel

unusually fragile. For a few awful moments she wond ered if she had fallen victim to whatever ailed the woman who had come to sit next to her on the boat, the scabs round her mouth and eyes and the putrid smell of her indi cating she was unwell. Kitty had moved away from the woman as soon as possible in ca se she might pass on her germs. Even so, she couldn’t help feeling as though she had caught something nasty. ‘How do we get there – to Portland Street?’ she pan ted. ‘I’ll ask somebody.’ Tom gave her a reassuring smil e, and seeing that her cheeks were now red with exertion he slowed his pace. Weaving their way between large piles of crates and dodging the lorries and carts, they joined the seething, sweaty crush at the port’ s gate. When it was their turn to pass through the gate, Tom asked the uniformed official for directions to Portland Street. ‘It’s a fair walk,’ the gatekeeper said, glancing a t Kitty’s strained face and then at her bulging bag and the suitcases. ‘You’d be better off taking a cab.’ He pointed to where a long queue had formed at the roadside, the people a t the head of it boarding the vehicles as one cab after another came chugging dow n the road. They joined the tail end of the queue, Kitty reliev ed that she wasn’t faced with a long walk, and Tom quailing inwardly at the thought of t he expense; maybe they should walk. He asked the man in front of him if he knew t he way to Portland Street, but halfway through the man’s ‘turn left at this street, right at that one,’he resigned himself to taking a cab. Kitty, feeling peckish and not wan ting to waste the sandwiches, fished them out of her bag and they ate them while they wa ited their turn. Once they were seated in the back of the cab, Kitty and Tom smiled at one another, their relief at having made it this far plain on th eir faces. Tom had stowed the suitcases onto a rack at the rear, but Kitty had held on to h er bag, resting it at her feet and liking the feeling of being in control of at least some of their possessions. As she gazed out of the window at the grand buildin gs and the crush of people in the busy streets, Tom quizzed the cabbie as to how they should get from Portland Street to Weaver Street in Edge Hill. The cabbie, a mine of information, was able to tell him which tram they needed and where to catch it. F eeling more in control, Tom sat back to enjoy the journey, reasoning that the cab f are was well worth it: Kitty could never have walked the distance. The cab trundled its way into the centre of Liverpo ol, stopping and starting in the congested thoroughfares. The streets thronged with people going about their business. Pavements steamed as the early morning sun dried of f an earlier shower of rain, and a strong smell of horse dung, oil and pungent unfamil iar smells wafted through the open window. Tom and Kitty peered this way and that, com menting on the vast buildings that towered over dense, sooty rows of shops and houses. Kitty thought it all looked rather dank and depressing, even though they had passed so me impressive shops such as Blacklers and Coopers. ‘o ye think we’re going to like livin’ in Liverpoo l?’ Her voice wobbled plaintively. They hadn’t lived in the best part of ublin, but i t had been much pleasanter than anything she had seen so far. ‘I’ve no idea,’ Tom replied. ‘We’ll just have to wa it and find out.’ ‘How long did you say it was since your uncle Seamu s had last visited your great- uncle Thomas?’ She already knew the answer and it o nly increased her anxiety but, like the tip of her tongue whenever she had a sore tooth, she felt the need to probe. ‘Ah, must be thirty or more years,’ Tom said easily . ‘That’s a long time. Tell me again what Seamus said about it?’ Tom screwed up his face. ‘Ach, well, like I already told ye, Seamus went over looking for work but he didn’t care for the place a nd came back home after a month or

two. He missed the farm and the wild countryside in Clare, so he said.’ Kitty wondered if she would feel the same. She had grown used to missing her home place in Roscommon and now she worried that sh e would miss ublin once she was living in Edge Hill. Home had been a remote sma llholding where she had lived with her parents and three brothers. In the same year th at she had turned sixteen her parents had died and Shaun, her youngest brother an d the one nearest her own age, had left home. After that, things had never been th e same. Her elder brothers, Padraig and Brendan Mulvenny, w ere ten and more years Kitty’s age, and both of them being unmarried, they had exp ected her to take over her mother’s role. Fed up of waiting on them hand and foot and eager to make her own way in the world she had packed her bags and moved to  ublin. Alone in the big city she had been fortunate enough to get a live-in job as a waitress at the Gresham Hotel. That was where she had met To m. She’d been bowled over when the handsome man with a roguish smile, flashin g blue eyes and black wavy hair had asked her to walk out with him. Her joy hadn’t lasted long. When she told him that her brother was a brigade commander in the Irish Re publican Army, Tom had been horrified. He told her he wanted no truck with the hotheads ruining the country. All he wanted was to earn his living as a bookmaker, quiet ly and peaceably, and climb the ladder until one day he had his own business. ‘It’s fools like them that stop decent fellas like me from making their way. Who cares who governs the country as long as we have money in our pockets and bread in our bellies?’ he had argued. For the next few weeks he had avoided her, but his desire to be with her greater than his abhorrence of her brother’s mutinous activ ities he’d sought her out. ‘Promise me ye’ll have nothin’ to do with your brother or hi s like,’ he’d said. Kitty had promised; she was already head over heels in love. After that , they’d spent every evening together. She had worried over what Shaun would thi nk if he knew she was walking out with a man who didn’t support the Republican cause. After all, the Easter Dprising, as people were calling it, had cost many lives and som e, like Shaun, were still waiting to learn their fate in an English jail. But when Tom told her he loved her and wanted her to marry him, Kitty had put all other thoughts out of her head. The wedding had been small, neither Kitty’s nor Tom ’s families making the journey from the west of Ireland to ublin, but Kitty hadn’ t expected anything else. She was marrying the handsomest man in ublin and that was all that had mattered. Her friend, Maureen, from the Gresham Hotel, had been her bride smaid and a chap from Power’s bookmakers had been Tom’s best man. uring the thre e months they had been married Kitty and Tom, like two excited children, h ad sealed their love. Now, in July 1916, she had crossed the Irish Sea and was sitting in a cab to God knows where or what. And had she been able to read Tom’s mind she would have learned that his thoughts matched her own: had the decision to come to England been a wise one?

They had been married just a month when the letter had arrived at the rooming house in ublin. Kitty would never forget the day. She ca me home from her job in the Gresham Hotel to find it lying on the little table in the lobby. No sooner had she lifted it than that old crone, Ma ry Hannigan, who lived in the bottom half of the house had poked her head out of her door, curiosity burning in her

black, currant-bun eyes. ‘Yez have a swanky letter wid an Engerlish stamp on it,’ she sneered, the derisory expression on her wizened fac e letting Kitty know just what she thought of anything that came out of England. As Kitty gazed at the tiny image of King George V, Mary craned her wrinkled neck, peering at the envelope and then at Kitty, her eyes willing Kitty to open it. ‘It looks mighty important to me.’ Kitty stared at the envelope, her curiosity mixed w ith fear. It did look important in an official sort of way, the kind that a court of law might use to issue a summons, she thought. The very sight of it threw her into a tizz y. ‘So it does, Mrs Hannigan,’ she croaked, hurrying to the foot of the stairs. ‘Are yez not goin’ to open it?’ Mary squawked. Kitty took the stairs two at a time, Mary’s scowl b urning holes in her back as she climbed the narrow flight that led up to the two ro oms she and Tom thought of as home. Inside the living room cum kitchen Kitty placed the letter on the table under the window. She gazed at the envelope, her fingers itch ing to take the knife she used for paring vegetables and slit it open: but it wasn’t h er letter, and she was unsure how Tom would feel about that. They hadn’t been married lon g enough for her to know such things, and it made her think how little she knew a bout her husband. Slowly, she unbuttoned her coat.I’ve a lot to learn, she’d told herself, tossing the coat over the back of a chair then smoothing imaginary creases fr om the crisp white shirt and calf- length black skirt that was her waitress’s uniform. Still feeling hot and bothered, she turned back to study the envelope again. The postmark showed that it had been posted on the four th of May 1916. That was just three days ago. Kitty neither wrote nor received le tters, so she was surprised to learn that one could travel so far in such a short space of time. The envelope bore the embossed name and address of a solicitor’s office in Liverpool, Lancashire, in England. Kitty traced the dark, red lettering with the tip of her finger. Now why would a solicitor in Liverpool – a place she’d only heard tell of – be writing to her Tom? As far as she knew, he’d never been to Liverpool. Propriety winning over temptation, she set the lett er on the mantelpiece. Propped majestically between the chimney breast and a small , lead statue of Our Lady, the thick, cream envelope taunted Kitty as, knife in ha nd and ears pricked, she began to peel potatoes for the evening meal. When she heard the thud of feet on the stairs her b reath whooshed out. She hadn’t been aware of holding it. Almost dizzy with relief she rinsed her hands under the tap and, wiping them dry on her skirt, she ran to open the door. Tom greeted her with a big smile, his blue eyes dan cing as he leaned in from the doorway to kiss her. ‘That’s a grand welcome for a man to come home to,’ he said, pulling off his cap. Locks of wavy black hair fell over his forehead, curled round his ears and at the nape of his neck. Kitty ran her fingers through them as she returned his kiss. Then, words failing her, she wagged a finger in the direction of the mantelpiece. Bemused, Tom looked to where she pointed. Seeing th e envelope, he strode over to the fireplace. ‘Who’s it from?’ he asked.

Seated stiffly upright on the cab’s shiny leather s eat, too nervous to relax, Tom willed the cab to speed up and get them to the solicitor’s office. He would dearly have liked a

cigarette. He gazed at the back of the cabbie’s hea d, greying hair straggling over a thick, red neck. If the cabbie lit up then so would he. The cab came to a complete standstill at a busy junction and Tom’s hopes rose then fell. Sadly, it seemed the chap was a non-smoker. He felt the warmth of Kitty’s thi gh next to his own and glanced sideways at her. She looked pensive. He thought he knew exactly how she felt. In the inside pocket of his best black suit jacket the letter was snug against his chest. With it was another letter in reply to the o ne Tom had written on the night the first letter had arrived. Had there been some mistake, he had enquired. By return, in grandiose language, Mr James Pennington of Penningt on, Pennington and uckworth had assured him that he was now the rightful owner of number eleven, Weaver Street, Edge Hill, Liverpool, in the county of Lancashire. When he had read it out loud Kitty had burst into tears. Tom still didn’t know whether the y had been tears of joy or regret. They had read and reread the letters many times ove r, gradually unravelling the unfamiliar terms and then digesting the full import of their meaning, all the while barely able to believe what they had read. ‘Bequeathed,’ Kitty said over and again, tasting th e word on her tongue. ‘But why did your great-uncle Thomas leave his house to you, Tom?’ Tom had sat back, rubbing his finely sculpted jaw. ‘Well, for one, I was named for him, he stood for me at my baptism, and for another , I’m the last of the Conlons in Quilty. What with a’s da being the only brother to marry and have a son, and then my da producing five girls and one son – me – I’m the last of the line to bear the name Conlon. Maybe Great-Dncle Tom hoped I’d be the one to carry it on.’ He’d given Kitty a nudge and a suggestive wink. Kitty had giggled, but her brow had creased as she tried to make sense of it. Night after night they had talked of little else, a nd during the day as Kitty served the diners in the Gresham Hotel and Tom took bets behin d the counter of Power’s bookmakers, the thought of what to do about the hou se in Edge Hill was never far from their minds. Should they ask Mr Pennington to sell it and send them the proceeds? That seemed to be the simplest answer, Kitty argued . The money would afford them better lodgings in ublin, maybe even enough to buy their own place. ‘I don’t know what to think, Tom,’ she persisted. ‘ Will we be safe there? The English are at war with the Germans.’ ‘Sure, an’ aren’t we at war with ourselves?’ Tom sn eered. ‘Is ublin the place where ye want to settle an’ raise a family?’ In a quandary, Kitty had given a helpless shrug. Ever since those dreadful days at Easter, less than two months before, the city had been restless. Neither Tom nor Kitty were involved in the politics of the situation – unlike her brother, Shaun, who was now suffering th e consequences – but the dangers could not be ignored. The Irish Republicans still t hirsted for Home Rule, and the British Government were still haggling over whether or not they might come to some agreement. Both the British and Irish forces regula rly perpetrated terrible deeds, and violence and fear roamed the heart of the city. The more Tom and Kitty had talked, the more convinced Tom was that Ireland was not the pla ce to make his fortune. ‘Think on it, Kitty,’ he had pleaded. ‘A house of o ur own and jobs aplenty. I know ye’re feared by the prospect of a strange place, bu t ublin was strange to ye when first ye came from Roscommon. I’m not saying I don’t stil l miss my home in Clare, but I do believe there’s so much more opportunity in England . It served Great-Dncle Tom well enough.’ ‘But I won’t know anyone,’ Kitty had pleaded. She was gregarious and liked having a circle of friends in a city about which she knew he r way. The thought of being uprooted