by Maureen Lee
Now, sitting in the corner referred to as ‘the nook’, with its gingham-covered table and teak chairs, Jessica regarded her lovely kitchen with a feeling of unmitigated rage. Soon it would no longer be hers. Any day now, she would have to leave Calderstones and the five-bedroomed detached mock-Tudor house would be sold to someone else. Some other woman would soon be sitting here delighting in the sight of the Aga and the cream refrigerator, because the house had been mortgaged to the hilt and the bank wanted their money back.
It had come as a total shock. She hadn’t suspected a thing, but last night, when every other sane person in the country had been discussing the war, Arthur had confessed the company was on its last legs, he’d borrowed thousands. Everything had to go.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ she asked, dazed, and as yet uncomprehending of the full nature of their misfortune.
‘I didn’t want to worry you.’
‘Worry me? And what’s all this if it isn’t worrying? Maybe I could have done something about it.’
She had a better head for figures than he had, but had thought him capable enough. After all, you didn’t need much of a feel for business to take over the running of a fully-fledged haulage company with several secure contracts and a dependable force of well paid drivers. Her father, who’d started the firm over thirty years ago with a single horse and cart and built it up until there were a dozen lorries, had scarcely any education at all. She stared at her husband with contempt. He was a good-looking man, perhaps more handsome now than when they married, though she’d always known he was weak.
‘I want to see the books, Arthur,’ she demanded angrily.
Jessica noticed his hands were shaking when he laid the books and a brown cardboard folder in front of her. She pored over the accounts for quite a while until she could make sense of things.
‘Why is there such a large amount for petrol? It’s nearly double last year’s?’
‘I don’t know.’ He looked vague.
‘But it doesn’t make sense,’ she said impatiently, ‘We’ve done less work, far less, yet used more petrol. Why, Arthur?’
‘I think some of the drivers have been thieving, siphoning it off,’ he replied eventually. His voice was subdued, ashamed.
‘Our drivers would never rob us.’ She was outraged. ‘Most are my father’s old friends.’
‘For Chrissakes, Jess,’ he said petulantly, ‘they left ages ago. They’re a different lot altogether now. After all, Bert’s been dead over ten years.’
Jessica took a deep breath and returned to the accounts. ‘Why have our insurance premiums leapt up? This is a colossal amount.’
He fidgeted with his Paisley silk tie. He was a conceited man, always concerned with his appearance. He had a penchant for silk; ties, shirts, underwear, and expensive hand-tailored suits. ‘We had quite a lot of claims last year,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Stuff went missing off the lorries …’
‘The drivers again?’ she remarked sarcastically.
‘I suppose it must have been.’
‘You didn’t consider sacking them?’
He squirmed in his seat, but didn’t reply.
‘Or fetching in the police?’
When he still remained silent, she demanded, ‘Why not?’ Then, in a harder voice, ‘Why not, Arthur?’
Incredibly, he looked close to tears. ‘To tell you the truth, I was scared. The drivers, they gang together, and they’re a rough lot.’
‘You bloody fool!’ she spat. Had she known, she would have wiped the floor with the drivers, every last one of them.
He began to cry. Too angry to be moved, Jessica left him sobbing and took the papers into the kitchen where she went through the figures item by item. There were massive amounts for maintenance of the lorries, mystifyingly large sums spent on tyres, the wage bill had trebled to include overtime, yet there’d been scarcely any income for months. After an hour of patient study Jessica came to the inevitable conclusion that her husband’s employees had been fleecing the company for years.
She opened the file. It was full of angry letters; from clients who’d had furniture moved, found an expensive item missing and refused to pay the bill, from customers cancelling regular contracts on account of ‘pilfering’ – on several occasions entire loads had gone missing – from creditors demanding payment, from the Income Tax – Arthur had paid nothing for years. But the letters that made Jessica’s heart turn cold were those from the bank. Arthur had borrowed against the house, more than it was worth, she felt convinced. He must have been subsidising the firm for a long time. The final letter was dated last week. If he didn’t repay at least part of the debt within twenty-eight days, they would take legal action.
Jessica tried to stay calm as the full scale of their predicament became clear. By now, it was past midnight and her head was thumping viciously. They were penniless. Worse than penniless, they were up to their ears in debt. She tried to do a few quick sums; the sale of the house would almost clear what was owing to the bank and if they got rid of the lorries and the car it would settle some of the creditors’ demands. There was a time when Hennessy’s Haulage and Removal Company would have fetched a tidy sum, but Jessica knew it would be a waste of time trying to sell the firm as a going concern now. Who would want it when they saw the books?
But even then, when everything had gone, they would still owe money, and there was nothing more shameful than owing money. Her father had never owed a penny in his life. How would they live, where would they live, with nothing coming in and a debt of more than four figures hanging over their heads?
It was then she remembered the properties in Bootle. Her father had bought them as an investment not long before he died. Twelve houses at nine and six rent a week came to … Her brain was too tired to work out such a simple sum. Whatever it was, it might keep the remaining creditors and the Income Tax people happy.
Jessica sighed. It was curious, but she almost felt a sense of relief. Anything, anything was better than declaring themselves bankrupt. Just the thought of it made her cringe with shame. Bankrupts had to make an announcement in the paper. She imagined the neighbours reading it, her friends from the bridge club, the choir, the WVS which she’d only joined recently as her contribution towards the war effort.
Arthur appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m going to bed,’ he muttered.
‘I thought you’d already gone,’ she said icily. He was swaying on his feet. ‘I see you’ve been at the brandy.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry you’re drunk or sorry about all this … this mess?’ She gestured towards the papers spread over the table.
‘About everything,’ he said in a small voice.
She took a deep breath. ‘What’s going to happen, Arthur? After we’ve sold the house and the company’s gone, what do we do then?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I don’t know, either. What will we live on? There won’t be a bean left by the time the whole mess has been sorted out. And where will we live, come to that?’ For a moment, she considered leaving him to clear the entire shambles up by himself. She could get a job, start afresh alone. It was no more than he deserved. Yet, deep down, Jessica knew she still loved him. He was weak and conceited, a coward who’d let her father’s business go to rack and ruin, but despite that, she couldn’t bring herself to walk out and leave him to cope on his own. He needed her and perhaps, in her own strange way, she needed him. Sadly, they’d never had the children they’d both so longed for. He was all she had. But he’d behaved badly and it would be a long time before things would be the same again.
He was mumbling something she couldn’t understand.
‘What did you say?’
‘I said, I’ll get a job, and one of the properties is empty. We could live in …’ he paused nervously at the sight of her horrified expression.
‘Live in Bootle!’ She couldn’t believe her ears. She said it again in order to convince herself the words had been spoken. �
�Live in Bootle?’
‘Why not?’ he asked simply.
‘Because me dad, I mean my father would turn in his grave.’ Just the mere mention of the place and she’d slipped up on her grammar. ‘You’ve never lived there, Arthur, you don’t know what it’s like.’
He shrugged. ‘It would be rent free.’
‘Which street is it?’
‘Pearl Street.’
‘Oh, no!’ She remembered the wall at the end, right next to their house, the trains puffing clouds of smoke, covering the washing with black smuts; she recalled the little rooms, the narrow stairs, the poky windows with horror. Yet, in a way, it made sense. You couldn’t get much further away from Calderstones than Bootle. It was way over the other side of Liverpool, where there was no chance of coming face to face with any of her old friends and neighbours. And there’d be no landlord coming round for the rent. She couldn’t bear the thought of going back to a landlord.
‘Someone might recognise me,’ she whispered.
Arthur actually had the gall to sound impatient. ‘Don’t be silly, Jess. You were only a girl when you left. What was it, fifteen?’
‘Fourteen.’
‘No-one will know you after all this time. And say someone did? It wouldn’t be the end of the world.’
It would be for me, she thought. The shame would kill me. ‘What about our furniture?’ she asked weakly.
‘We could sell it with the house, I suppose. Just keep a few pieces for the new one.’
‘New!’ she said bitterly. ‘I was born in one of those “new” houses. Our refrigerator would never fit in the kitchen and we’d have to leave the Aga behind. Not only that, the lounge isn’t much bigger than this nook, it wouldn’t take the three-piece and what would I do with the dining room suite?’ The oak table, when extended, was twelve feet long and there were eight chairs upholstered in red sculptured velvet, two of them carvers. Overcome, Jessica began to cry.
Arthur patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’
‘And so you bloody well should be,’ she wailed. ‘You’ve ruined my life. You’ve ruined everything. Go away.’
She went to bed eventually and slept in one of the spare bedrooms. Next morning, she had a bath and struggled into her tightest and most flattering rubber corselet which showed off her voluptuous figure to its best advantage. After much deliberation in front of her packed wardrobe, she chose a beige linen suit which had a matching Robin Hood style hat with a freckled feather, put the books and the file in an attaché case, and went to see the bank manager. There was no sign of Arthur. She had no idea whether he was still in bed or had gone out, and wasn’t much interested.
At the bank, the manager tried to insist on Arthur’s presence, but she told him if he wanted the bank’s money back he had to talk to her. ‘It’s my house,’ she said tartly, ‘and my company. Both of them belonged to my father, which I’m sure you’re well aware of. I know they’d been transferred into our joint names, but if you’d had any common sense you’d have informed me what was going on. Instead, you gave money, hand over fist, to my husband and I didn’t know a thing about it. I bet if I’d tried to borrow, you wouldn’t have given me, a woman, a penny without consulting my husband first.’
The manager had the grace to look uncomfortable. Perhaps it was guilt, but he ended up being quite helpful. After briefly perusing the contents of the attaché case, he advised that the most important thing to do was pay the Income Tax. In fact, if the deeds of the house were signed over to the bank, the manager would advance a further loan for this purpose, otherwise Arthur could end up in jail. The bank would settle the outstanding debts with the proceeds from the house and eventual sale of the lorries and agree to ‘monies still outstanding’ being repaid weekly from the rents of the properties in Bootle.
‘How does that suit you, madam?’ he asked pompously when he’d finished explaining.
Jessica felt as if she’d like to spit in his well shaven, talcum-powdered face. Her corselet was killing her, digging into the flesh at the top of her legs and, although she appreciated the advice, he’d dispensed it in a slow pedantic way as if she were a child – or as stupid as Arthur. ‘Apart from the fact it doesn’t leave us a penny to live on, it suits me fine,’ she said acidly.
‘Of course, once the house is ours – the legal proceedings should only take a few weeks – I must insist you leave immediately, otherwise we would be obliged to charge you rent, and in the interim, any borrowings are subject to interest, which is rather high at the moment.’
So, they wanted blood as well as flesh. Bestowing upon him a smile that could have killed, Jessica left.
Outside, she was about to hail a taxi to the firm’s depot in Long Lane, when she remembered she’d better start being careful where money was concerned. She caught a tram instead and sat behind a woman with two children who both kept drawing chewing gum out of their mouths in long, wet sticky strings. Jessica stared at them. They knelt on the seat and stared insolently back. These were the sort of people she’d be mixing with now. Damn Arthur, she could strangle him.
She got off at Long Lane and walked around the corner to the depot. Ten lorries, all painted the familiar fawn colour, with ‘Hennessy’s Haulage and Removal’ in maroon, stood in a row in the yard, which meant there were only two out on a job of work. A dozen or more men were lounging outside the little wooden office – she hadn’t realised how ramshackle it had become – some playing pitch and toss, others bent over a folded newspaper. As Jessica approached, she saw it was open on the racing page.
She didn’t recognise a single face and cursed herself for not having taken more interest in the firm. Her father had built it up by the sweat of his brow, working from early morning till late at night, and it had been ruined by this crowd of … of louts!
There were several wolf whistles when they saw her approaching and comments about her figure which she affected not to hear.
‘Can I help you, Missus?’ one of them asked with a leer.
Jessica had no intention of beating around the bush. ‘I’m Mrs Fleming, the boss’s wife,’ she announced brusquely. ‘All of you, get off these premises immediately. You’re sacked.’ She wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of knowing the company was to close.
There was the expected outrage, a chorus of swearwords and threats, but Jessica held her ground fearlessly. The more they swore, the stronger she became. She was no longer Jessica Fleming of Calderstones, but Jessie Hennessy, whose dad had started off as a rag and bone merchant in Pearl Street, Bootle, though even Arthur didn’t know that!
‘What about our wages?’ One of the men came up and thrust his face against hers. It was an effort not to recoil from the stench of his foul breath.
‘You’re not getting a penny.’
There was a howl of incredulous laughter. ‘D’you really think you’ll get away with that?’
‘Yes, I do,’ Jessica said calmly, ‘because if you don’t leave immediately, I’ll call the police. I know all about the thieving that’s been going on, and unlike my husband, you don’t scare me a bit.’
‘You know, you’re askin’ for it, Missus.’
She was suddenly surrounded by half a dozen men looking down at her threateningly. She glanced across at the road. There weren’t all that many people about. Still, she’d gone this far, she couldn’t back down now.
‘If that’s the way you want it, I’ll call the police from the office here and now.’ As she pushed her way through the crowd, a hand reached out and grabbed her arm. Jessica looked down at the hand scornfully, then up at the man’s angry face. ‘Brave, aren’t you? I reckon a woman is just about your match.’
Suddenly, one of the men burst out laughing. ‘I’ll say this for you, Missus,’ he said admiringly. ‘You’ve got more guts in your little finger than the boss’s got in his entire body. Come on, mates, let’s do as she sez. I’m expecting me calling up papers soon, so’s I would’ve been leaving, anyway.’
Whe
n Jessica arrived home, Mrs Blanchard had just finished mopping the kitchen floor.
‘Had some visitors over the weekend did you, Missus? I noticed the bed in one of the spare rooms needed making,’ she remarked breathlessly when she came back in through the utility room after having emptied the bucket and wrung out the mop. Her old eyes sparkled in her deeply lined face. Mrs Blanchard never looked anything but completely happy.
‘Yes, we did,’ Jessica said absently. She’d just realised Mrs Blanchard would have to go. From now on, Jessica would have to mop her own floors, make her own bed, polish her own furniture. It was going to be awkward, sacking the woman, who’d been a good worker and very dependable in the long time she’d worked there, despite her advancing years.
‘Here, come on, luv, sit down and I’ll make you a cup of tea. You look all flustered,’ Mrs Blanchard said solicitously. ‘In fact, I wouldn’t mind one meself, I’ve hardly stopped since I came in this morning.’
Jessica had never encouraged the habit that even some of her most well-bred friends adopted, of sitting down for a gossip and a cup of tea or coffee with the charwoman. She usually made herself scarce when Mrs Blanchard stopped for her break. This morning, however, she sat down in the nook and allowed herself to be waited on.