But despite their father’s efforts, Levi was always halfhearted about the business and Freddie had no interest whatsoever. The one thing that united all of the family, young and old, male and female, was an undying passion for football and devotion to Grimbleton Town United in particular. ‘The Grasshoppers’ were now making slow progress through the ranks towards the First Division. It was Lily’s father who suggested the team use an osteopath to sort out any bad backs. He even found them Terry Duffy, who got some tired legs up and running in the Cup tie against Bolton Wanderers that nearly went to a replay at Burnden Park, alas to no avail.
Then Dr Baker kicked up a fuss and said Terry was taking his trade away and got him kicked out. Redvers threatened to resign from the Board but it was an empty threat. When the Grasshoppers were doing well the whole town was on fire; when they slumped it was as if a blanket of cloud hovered above the mill chimneys. A win was the best tonic for all. Lily supposed it was because football and romance ran side by side in her family.
Esme had been a player in her younger days, turning out for the Crompton’s Biscuits ladies’ team. They had played a friendly on the town pitch and that’s when Redvers and Esme eyed each other up across the turf and the dynasty was founded.
Even Lily and Walt had met standing side by side to watch one of the special friendly matches laid on during the war. It turned out they both worked in the Market Hall, he at the far end in his uncle’s stationery stall. Small world indeed, and now when they could match shifts, they went together to see their team of local lads.
Sometimes when she drew back the stall curtains Lily half expected to see her dad smiling, pristine in his white coat, waiting to help his customers, his thick wavy hair slicked back, his moustache waxed and with that twinkle in his blue eyes that charmed the ladies.
How she had missed him over the years since a sudden stroke took him from them! Mother had taken to ailments and fits of misery since he had gone. She blamed his early death on the Great War and his time in the trenches. He was one of the few of the Grimbleton Pals Brigade to make it home in one piece.
‘It weakened him, took the stuffing out of him. Not that he would ever say a word about it, mind,’ she sighed. No one talked about the Great War much. She was glad he hadn’t known both his sons went into another war so quickly after the last.
He had his own theory how to keep world peace. ‘If only we could play life fair by the football rules,’ he would say. ‘There’d be no more war. We’d just get on that pitch and give each other hell until full time. Sort it out clean and proper.’
Not that he practised what he preached, for standing next to him at a match was a revelation. He would yell and rant and cuss and swear. ‘Get them off, the pair of sissies! Hang up yer boots, lad, yer shot was a twopenny bus ride from the goal!’
If only the Zion minister could have heard his trusty steward letting rip at the goalie, Lily smiled.
Theirs was a special bond built on his delight in having a girl in the house. ‘This one’s the sharpest blade in the knife box.’ He would point to her with pride. ‘Not the fanciest to look at but she does it right first time, my Lily of Laguna. If you want owt doing, she’s your gal!’
He would be proud that, like the famous Windmill Theatre Revues, they never closed for the entire duration of the war. Together with Esme, Lily had kept the stall going against the odds when all the rules and restrictions came into force. Many herbal stores were forced to close but they decided to open half the stall as a temperance bar, serving juices, hot cordials and a good line of medicinal sweets and herbal homemade cough candy, dispensing what little stock they could.
It was a tough time, fire-watching in the evening, keeping the Brownie pack alive with badge work and salvage drives, but nothing to what her brothers had to go through in Burma and on the Continent.
She was looking at her wristwatch, surprised that it was mid-morning already, when a welcome figure tapped her shoulder.
‘Time for our cuppa?’ Walter towered over her in his brown dust coat, pointing to the café opposite. She could sit down and keep her eye on the stall at the same time.
‘You bet,’ she smiled, pecking him on the cheek. ‘Where were you yesterday at the Armistice parade? I missed you at the cenotaph.’
‘I was there with Mam but you know it gets her all upset. We went home early.’ You couldn’t fault a man who was kind to his mother, but Lily had been hoping to invite him back for tea.
‘Hey, you missed a cracking match on Saturday, two nil to the Grasshoppers. They’re on a roll this season.’
‘Yes, I’ve been hearing reports all morning,’ she sighed. ‘I had to stand in for Levi again.’
‘I saw him in the directors’ box with all the toffs, lucky beggar.’
‘I just wish he’d give me a Saturday off, once in a blue moon. When did you and I last get to watch a match together?’
‘It was the best game this season.’
‘So everyone keeps saying, so shut up,’ she snapped.
‘The lads were on form, Wagstaff dribbling the ball down the outside right, passing to Walshie and he spins it straight in the net, brilliant!’
‘Walter Platt, don’t torment me.’ She tugged his sleeve but he was oblivious.
‘The second goal came just before half-time. I reckoned we finished them off there and then.’
She missed the crowds gathering, the noise and cheering, a chance to let off steam. Redvers had taken them all as a treat and left them at home as a punishment. There were chips in newspaper on the way home, which no one was to tell Esme about, for it was too common for a Winstanley to eat in the street.
‘When we’re married we’ll bring all our kiddies to see the game,’ Lily sighed, imagining a five-a-side of gleaming faces.
‘Oh, no, love, it’s not a place to bring youngsters with all that swearing and rough talk, and there’s germs to think about.’
‘It never did us any harm,’ she replied, surprised by his attitude.
‘Mother says it’s all that standing as did my back in. I grew too tall for my bones.’
‘I thought the doctor said you had a bit of a curved spine…’
‘It’s the same thing,’ he replied.
‘No, it’s not. It means you’re born with a bend in your back,’ she continued.
‘Oh, you do like to go into things, Lil. All I know is, it never bothered me until I was out of short trousers, when my legs just sprouted like rhubarb. I bent over one day and couldn’t get up. Never bin right since. You’ve no idea what it’s like to live with backache.’
‘I’m sorry, it must be a pain,’ she said, seeing the grimace on his face.
‘So you should be. You’re going to have to nurse it when we’re wed, with one of your liniment oils.’
‘Shall I give you a rub down later?’ she winked.
‘Lily Winstanley, none of that sauce from a respectable woman! Mother can see to it, thank you very much. By the way, could she have a few more liver pills? Her stomach’s playing up again.’
‘Has she thought of trying a lighter diet? She does like her pastry and her chips,’ Lily offered, knowing that Elsie Platt was a little beer barrel on legs.
‘A widow’s got to have a little comfort in life. We’ve no money