Free Laceys of Liverpool by Maureen Lee Page B

home?’ he called.
    ‘Only me, Grandad,’ Cormac shouted from upstairs.
    ‘Surely you haven’t been left all on your own!’ Danny exclaimed on his way up to the boxroom where his grandson slept.
    ‘Dad said Mam or the girls’d be back soon.’ Cormac was sitting up in bed, his slightly too big wincyette pyjamas buttoned neatly to the neck. He put down the book he was reading when his grandad came in.
    ‘Your mam’ll be dead cross if she finds you all by yourself. I’ll stay till someone comes.’ Danny sat on the edge of the narrow bed. ‘What’s that you’re reading, son?’
    ‘I’m not ’xactly
reading
it, Grandad,’ Cormac explained gravely. ‘I’m trying to do the sums.’
    Danny gaped. The lad, only five years old, wasactually studying an
arithmetic
book. His heart swelled with pride. Wait till he told Phyllis and his mates in the pub! ‘Need any help, son?’ he enquired, though beyond the twelve times table he needed help himself.
    ‘What’s that word?’ Cormac turned the page and pointed to the heading.
    ‘Multiplication. It means . . .’
    ‘I know what it means, Grandad. It means “times”. I didn’t know how it was said. The next page is “long” something. I don’t know how that’s said either.’
    ‘Long division, son.’ He was beginning to think his grandson was a genius. ‘Can you do all these things – the long division and the times?’
    ‘Only with little figures,’ Cormac confessed sadly.
    ‘Can the whole class do them?’ Danny asked.
    Cormac shook his fair head. ‘Acshully, Grandad, school’s a bit fed-upping. I wish it weren’t so dead easy.’
    He should be moved up to a higher class, Danny thought indignantly. He’d have a word with Alice when she came in.
    Not far away in Irlam Road, Bernadette Moynihan also felt indignant. To think that all these years she’d been sweet on such a rampant misogynist! Even when she’d been married to her darling Bob she had continued to find Danny Mitchell slightly disturbing.
    It had started when his wife died and Danny had appeared so devastated. She was eight, same as Alice, and had resolved to marry him, take care of him, when she grew up. He was only twenty-nine and, as Bernadette grew older – became twelve, sixteen, twenty – in her eyes Danny remained the same. One of these days she’d catch up with him, he’d notice her and ask for her hand in marriage. She had spent many happy hours imaginingwhat it would be like being Danny Mitchell’s wife. This was one of the few dreams she hadn’t confided to Alice, who might not care to have her best friend as a stepmother.
    Then Bernadette had met Bob Moynihan and all thoughts of Danny Mitchell had fled from her mind – except when she met him in the flesh, when her knees were still inclined to grow weak and her cheeks to turn pink. She used to pray Bob wouldn’t notice and he never had.
    But now! Now she had completely gone off him. ‘You can’t chuck a man out of his own home no matter what he’s done,’ he’d actually said. Oh, really! She’d have flattened John Lacey with a frying pan if she’d been in Alice’s shoes, then dragged him outside and had the locks changed so he couldn’t get back in.
    She hated men, every single one of them, and she hated Danny Mitchell the most.
    At the next table a black man had pulled a girl on to his knee and was touching her breasts beneath her green jumper.
    The girl laughed and pulled away. Her face was orange with powder and her mouth a vivid scarlet. She had a green bead as big as a marble dangling from each ear. ‘Eh, mate. I don’t usually let fellas do that for free.’
    The man leered, showing large, very white teeth. ‘How much you charge?’
    ‘Five bob and I’m all yours for half an hour.’
    ‘Where we go?’
    ‘Outside, I’ll show you where, but give us the five bob first.’
    The couple left and John Lacey felt something stir in the pit of his stomach. After ten chaste months and half a dozen pints