AUTHOR’S NOTE

Scotland Road is a real place. A few buildings remain, widely spaced like remnants in a lower jaw after brutal dentistry. There are not many houses, yet the pubs were packed on the afternoons when I visited the road. I wondered where all those people had come from. Do they make a daily pilgrimage back to the old neighbourhood?

Although I have adhered to some street names, the parish of St Aloysius Gonzaga is a figment of my imagination. I decided not to use actual churches as I wished not to offend members of existing religious communities. St Aloysius was the patron of my house at school, so I chose him as a good man who would not mind if I pinched his name.

After attending mass at St Anthony’s on Scotland Road, I have to say that I have never seen a more beautiful church. Like a miniature cathedral, it is perfectly maintained by a proud congregation whose friendliness and openness were much appreciated.

As a result of my advertisement in the Liverpool Echo, I met many ex-residents of Scotland Road. Eileen Weir (my researcher – thanks, Eileen) and I were privileged to meet a number of people whose roots were torn up by the clearances. We talked to teachers, tradespeople, men from the Merchant and Royal Navies, soldiers, social workers and many more. All of these had received their education in the excellent schools around Scotland Road.

These days, we hear and read much about deprivation. Socio-economic factors are cited repeatedly as the guilty parties when people take a wrong turning in life. Scotland Road suffered a poverty that has been stamped out, thank God. Yet out of that happy squalor emerged successful and law-abiding citizens whose standard of education is superb. Their eyes light up, sometimes with pleasure and often with tears, when they talk about their beginnings.

I am not a Scouser, though I have lived in and around Liverpool for more than half my life. This, my ninth book, is the first based in the city I have come to love. It has been a pleasure to meet and correspond with such wonderful, vibrant men and women, to hear about the wash-houses, Scouse Alley, Paddy’s Market, the Scaldy where children swam, the Mary Ellens with their baskets of fruit, the penny dip, cherry-wobs, molasses taken from a moving cart, Lascars balancing six bowlers on their heads while carrying a fireplace and several wind-up gramophones back to their ship.

While writing The Bells, I have laughed and cried. As a ‘foreigner’, I can only do my best to depict an area in which I never lived. Forgive my mistakes as I try to portray a way of life in which family was all.

Ruth Hamilton, Crosby, Liverpool