My Heart Forgets To Beat

He loves her, she loves him not. Or does she? Will he always love her? And who knows what she really wants? The first time young Vaughan Thomas sets eyes on Ruth Parry, he fumbles for pennies to buy her pamphlet. Now he has something to aim for in his already corrupt life. So what sets the lovely imp above him? It could be her modern-girl looks. Or her perfect tongue-in-cheek. Nothing hurts like rejection, even when life in the stark new world of the Nineteen Twenties has so many pulls. Every street corner boasts its music hall, picture house, dance parlour or show room full of affordable cars and motorbikes. No point sitting and brooding when there are next-door girls, office girls, shop girls, even hat-check girls to dance the night away with. Liverpool is the Pool of Life, for the air raids of World War Two are still a decade off. Yet a cloud broods over the city. There is something menacing in the world at large. Inequality, privilege, pettiness, the damn lies of politicians, the raw statistics of working for a living. In the long run, the pursuit of love and sex seems such a empty sort of goal, Vaughan struggles to cast it off. But just when he thinks he can take love, or leave it, the boomerang comes swinging round again and a woman throws everything back in his stupid face. An all-colour production years ahead of its time, "My Heart Forgets To Beat" (title taken from Ray Noble's 1933 hit, "The Touch of Your Lips") simply pulses with romance and history. Also available on Kindle. For more information, and other writing by Philip Lee, go to: downwritefiction@blogspot.com