Daughters of the Mersey Read Online Free

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 ofdeep 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 twelve, Milo was growing up and becoming more independent. Steve had objected to his friends coming to the house, saying they were too noisy and he couldn’t get his rest. Some of the boys were scared of him because he would burst into the playroom and scold them when their noise level lifted high enough for him to hear it. Milo had argued with him, saying itwas just good-humoured chatting. As a result, he’d asked his mother if he could take over the old summer house that nobody used now.
    ‘A good idea,’ she’d said. She’d thought they wouldn’t annoy Steve out there in the fresh air.
    Milo and his friends had begun to use it as a club room, but it did annoy Steve, he’d see the boys coming and going through the window of his study. ‘They disturb me,’ he’d complained.
    ‘Dad, can we move it further from the house?’
    ‘No, it’s far too old. It was my mother’s, your grandmother’s. She liked to sit out there on sunny days.’
    ‘It was meant to move, wasn’t it?’
    ‘No, only round to catch the sun.’
    ‘I could ask Duggie’s father to come and see if he thinks it’s possible to move it. If we set it against the wall by the back gate, Pa, you wouldn’t see or hear anything.’
    ‘You’ll never manage it,’ he said contemptuously and returned to his study.
    Leonie believed in letting children attempt what they thought they could achieve, and as Steve hadn’t actually forbidden it, when Milo had appealed to her for permission she said, ‘You can try if you wish, but you mustn’t churn up the garden and there must be nothing left on the lawn near the house.’
    Milo brought two adults, a father and an older brother to give their opinion. They thought moving it would be possible, the wood had been treated with ship’s varnish and was still in good condition, but they would need to take it apart into manageable pieces. Leonie persuaded Steve to give his permission and it took three weekends. Milo roundedup almost every boy in the neighbourhood to help and they all seemed to enjoy doing it.
    Somewhere along the line it