Someone to Trust

by Someone to Trust (retail) (epub)

  Barney’s house, situated on St Domingo Road, faced on to the Corporation’s Electrical Supply Works in Cobb’s Quarry and was similar in some ways to the house on Northumberland Terrace, although the front garden was longer and there were more steps going up to the front door. It was on the crest of a hill, so you went down into the kitchen, which was the warmest place in the whole house due to its huge range.

  A door led out from the kitchen on to a large rear yard from which you could reach Devonshire Place where there was a children’s recreation ground. The other basement room contained a copper, a sink and a mangle. On the ground floor was a parlour and a music room, which contained a piano, shelves of books and music, a roll-topped desk and an enormous buttoned leather chair in which someone Lucy’s size could easily curl up and be lost. On the floor above there were two bedrooms and a bathroom and above that two attic rooms. One housed the maid.

  ‘Can I have the other one?’ asked Timmy, eyes shining as he glanced up at the sloping ceiling with its skylight.

  Maureen looked at Barney, who’d struggled up the stairs with them. ‘Why not?’ he said, a nerve twitching beneath his left eye. ‘This used to be my room. Timmy’ll be out of the way up here.’

  ‘You were put all the way up here?’ said Lucy. ‘How did you manage the stairs?’

  ‘That was the way my father wanted it. I was damaged… imperfect.’ There was an angry light in Barney’s eyes.

  ‘That’s terrible! How did you turn out as nice as you have?’ said Lucy.

  He smiled and jingled the money in his pockets. ‘I’m no angel, Lucy. And what’s the use of worrying about it now? It was a long time ago and they’re all dead, but I’m still here! Let’s go down.’

  Maureen and Barney were to have the large room at the front of the house and of course Lucy was to have the rear one, which pleased her because it looked down the hill and on to the greenery of the recreation ground.

  Maureen and Lucy persuaded Barney to have electricity installed in all the main rooms of the house and they delighted in switching the lights off and on, off and on. The novelty of instant light at the touch of a switch took some time to wear off. Timmy and the maid had to make do with candles. Walls were painted peach and cream and sunshine yellow, but the main bedroom and parlour were adorned in floral printed wallpaper, which made everyone feel they had wandered into a garden. Then mother and daughter had an enjoyable time going to Lewis’s in the town centre to buy bedding, as well as fabrics for new curtains.

  But the highlight of the weeks preceding the wedding was the choosing of material for Maureen’s wedding outfit and Lucy’s bridesmaid’s frock: ivory satin for the bride and peach for the bridesmaid. The dresses were made up in a shop on Scotland Road. Lucy thought her mother had gone completely crazy when she chose satin shoes to match their dresses.

  ‘It’s a waste of money,’ she whispered in Maureen’s ear. ‘Can you see me flogging firewood or sweets outside the pictures in these? Or cleaning? I’ll never wear them again!’

  ‘Of course you will! You’ll be giving those jobs up, Luce, once I’m Mrs Barney Jones.’ Maureen’s eyes gleamed as she stood and gazed at her own neat ankles reflected in the mirror. ‘If I’m to be a lamb to the slaughter, I might as well be dressed for it.’

  Lucy’s heart sank. ‘I thought you wanted to marry Barney?’

  ‘Of course I do!’ said Maureen sharply, whirling round to face her. ‘We’re having a fine time of it, aren’t we?’ You don’t think I’m a traitor to my own church and kind, do you?’ Her eyes seemed to bore into Lucy’s.

  ‘Of course not! If you love him, does it matter? He’s a good man. A generous man.’

  ‘Exactly! Who wouldn’t love a man like that?’ Maureen’s smile dazzled Lucy. ‘You need your hair cutting and styling. We’ll go to Hill’s in Ranelagh Street.’

  So Lucy’s hair was cut, shampooed and set with perfumed lotion. Afterwards it curled like a gleaming chestnut cap about her small head.

  ‘Earrings!’ said Barney, eyes shining with pleasure when he saw the finished product. ‘Maureen! She must have her ears pierced – and you, too. Diamonds for you, pearl drops for our little bridesmaid.’

  Lucy gasped. She hadn’t believed Barney was that rich.

  The wedding was to take place in St George’s church at Barney’s request. He had also asked in a teasing voice whether Maureen minded the women of the church preparing the meal afterwards.

  Maureen had not answered immediately. From her seat on the large leather chair in the music room, Lucy, who was reading Charles Dickens, had held her breath. Then her mother had smiled and nodded.

  From that moment on it seemed no time at all before the wedding day dawned and mother, daughter and son were dressing in their finery to go to church.

  Lucy and Timmy, he in a sailor suit, followed Maureen up the aisle. It was one of her dreams come true, thought Lucy. St George’s church, with its slim cast-iron pillars soaring into an intricate tracery which held up the Welsh slate roof, was the perfect setting and Barney looked so handsome in a charcoal grey lounge suit. How could her mother not love him? thought Lucy, warmed by her own affection for him. Yet she was anxious for Maureen. Her face was so pale it seemed possible she might faint.

  They arrived in front of the chancel and stood alongside Barney and his best man. Lucy had not given a thought to whom that might be and almost fainted herself when she caught sight of Rob, looking very serious. Dear God! she thought. Would she have to dance with him? She tried to imagine that austere face breaking into a smile as his dark head bent over hers. ‘A waltz, Lucy?’ he would say. She couldn’t waltz. The only dancing she knew was prancing around in something that resembled an Irish jig. She would like to learn to dance properly. Some of the new ones that were reported in the papers might make their way across the Atlantic from America. She wondered if Dilys danced.

  The service started and Lucy was aware as she took her mother’s bouquet that Maureen was shaking like a navvy with a drill. Lucy wanted to say something reassuring but it was too late.

  The choir led the congregation in ‘Lead me, o thou great Jehovah!’ that powerful Welsh hymn to the tune of ‘Cwm Rhondda’. It was so moving it made Lucy’s toes curl in their satin shoes. She thought what a shame it was that Aunt Mac, who loved a good singsong, wasn’t there but she strongly disapproved of what Maureen was doing. Despite its being a lovely service, it was a relief when it was finally over and her mother was married to Barney.

  The wedding breakfast took place in the mission hall on Mere Lane. Miss Griffiths and some of the other women from the church had had the arranging of it and the food could not be faulted. There were hams and tongue, sausage rolls and pies, mince pies and cakes. To drink there was tea, ginger beer or lemonade. There was only one speech and it was very much to the point. Barney said what a lucky man he was, not only in getting himself a beautiful bride but in gaining a family in one fell swoop. He ordered the guests to enjoy themselves and that was it.

  After most of the food was consumed there were games for the children and the adults, and singing. Such singing that it threatened to lift the roof off. It seemed to Lucy as if the whole church was there, or at least the Welsh Choral Society to which all the Joneses belonged. She need not have worried about waltzing or foxtrotting. There was some dancing but it was the square kind where a man shouted out the steps. Owen had the nerve to ask her to be his partner and she would have refused if he hadn’t seized her hand and swept her into a set. She made a complete mess of it, dosy doe-ing when she should have been swinging round and round. She collapsed in helpless laughter and only then did she become aware of Dilys glowering on the sidelines.

  Lucy immediately suggested Owen should dance with the boss’s niece and pushed him in her direction. She herself was glad to sit out and drink lemonade and watch other people. Then she spotted Rob dancing with his dark-haired beauty and felt such a stab of jealousy that it almost stopped her breath. Oh, to look that good, to b
e that height and age, to have a man unable to take his eyes off her face. She swallowed a sudden lump in her throat and told herself not to be so daft. What did she want with Rob? She would never be able to forget he knew her secret. And could even the best of men be depended on?

  He surprised her by coming over towards the end of the evening. ‘So, what do you think? Will they be happy?’

  Lucy felt thrown on the defensive. ‘Of course!’ Her eyes challenged him. ‘Do you doubt it?’

  ‘They’ve several barriers to cross but if they love each other…’ He paused and smiled at her. ‘You’ve got what you wanted, anyway.’

  ‘I’m very fond of him,’ murmured Lucy, gazing across at her stepfather.

  ‘Yes, I’ve noticed,’ said Rob drily, and walked away.

  Lucy watched the girlfriend claim him. She’d been told her name was Blodwen Morgan and she worked in a shipping office as a secretary.

  Later that day, after Lucy and Timmy had seen their mother and Barney off on the train to Llandudno for a week’s honeymoon, they went back to their new home. As Lucy took off her wedding finery and gazed at her reflection in the oval mirror on the chest of drawers she could still see in her mind’s eye Rob’s face. She did not know why she felt this tug of attraction where he was concerned. It was a waste of time. She thought of Barney and how he’d wanted herself and her mother looking like fairy princesses down to the rings in their ears. Now he was the kind of man she could look to if she wanted the next dream on her list to come true – and she was not going to wait long before broaching the topic with him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Lucy looked across at her mother as they carried the steaming bedding on a sheet of wood from the copper to the sink. They dunked the sheets and pillow cases into cold water. ‘Did you ever dream, Mam, when you married Uncle Barney, we’d still be doing this kind of thing?’

  Maureen rested a hand on the rim of the sink as she eased a strand of damp hair behind one ear. She looked tired. ‘I did sometimes dream of being waited on hand and foot but Agnes is all that husband of mine came up with as a help.’

  The all-purpose maid chuckled. ‘I’m doing me best, Mrs Jones, but I haven’t ten pairs of hands.’ She was rubbing the neck of one of Barney’s shirts with a block of Lively Polly washing soap.

  ‘But you’re a cheerful little soul and that makes up for a lot,’ said Lucy, smiling.

  ‘Tell me the truth, are you happy here, Agnes?’ asked Maureen.

  ‘Love it,’ said the widow woman enthusiastically. ‘Since Father died, and having no chick of my own, I’ve been that lonely.’

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re happy. And how about you, girl? Are you happy being at home?’ Maureen looked at her daughter.

  Lucy shrugged. ‘It beats standing on street corners and getting up in the dark to sell firewood during the winter but now spring’s arrived I’m thinking I’d like to be doing something else. A different kind of job.’

  It was over a year since the wedding and so much that was good had happened that she felt ungrateful for feeling the way she did but she was seventeen and wanted more out of life than being at home, helping her mother and the maid. But Barney had hit the roof when Lucy had suggested carrying on working.

  ‘Aren’t I providing for all your needs?’ he had thundered.

  His anger had surprised her and as Maureen had immediately taken his side and said she wanted Lucy to stay at home because she enjoyed her company so much, the girl had backed down. But she missed earning her own money, and really was still working but not getting paid for it, although Barney was generous in so many other ways.

  ‘What? Don’t start that again, Luce!’ groaned her mother. ‘Wasn’t Christmas wonderful?’

  The last two Christmases had indeed been wonderful with an enormous tree in the parlour decorated with tinsel and candles. This Christmas tied to its branches had been lots of surprise presents from Barney for all of them. Tortoiseshell and mother-of-pearl slides for the women’s hair, chocolates and sandalwood soap, books and puzzles, gloves and scarves. Under the tree on Christmas morning there had been a bicycle for Timmy and new winter coats trimmed with fur and hats to match for Lucy and Maureen. Dinner had been an enormous leg of pork and a chicken with all the trimmings. There had been a steaming pudding, mince pies and Christmas cake.

  Lucy had felt guilty having so much when she knew of people who would be getting very little, so she’d wrapped up slices of cake and posted them through the letter boxes of all the houses in Court 15. Barney had partially eased her conscience by telling her he had given money to the Echo’s Goodfella Appeal which provided parcels for the poor, but she could only think it wasn’t she who had given the money. She had also gone along to Aunt Mac’s but there had been no answer. A neighbour had popped her head out of next door, informing Lucy they’d gone to Ireland and she didn’t know when they’d be back. She had called several times since but never managed to catch Aunt Mac in. Sometimes she wondered if the old woman was inside listening in silence, waiting for her to go away, and that saddened her.

  Barney had also taken them to London. It had been a birthday treat for Maureen. The railways had run special trains to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. They had seen the King, whose voice had been recorded for the first time. That had been a thrill but what they’d enjoyed most of all was Liverpool’s exhibition in the Wembley Civic Hall, showing the best the city had to offer. There flew the flags of the sixty shipping lines who used the port regularly. To Lucy’s surprise, she and Timmy, on wandering off, had met Dilys and Rob who had also gone to see the working models of a Liverpool tram and Stephenson’s Rocket.

  Rob had explained how the models worked to Timmy and for a moment Lucy had found pleasure in gazing at the man’s animated face until Dilys told her that she and her aunt were expecting his engagement to be announced any minute. The four of them had left the building together, pausing outside to listen to the Liverpool Police Band entertaining the crowds. Lucy remembered Rob asking her how things were with Barney and her mother, and whether she was enjoying being a lady of leisure. She told him there was little time for leisure when helping keep clean and tidy a large house and looking after a family. He’d laughed and said that was the trouble when dreams came true: reality wasn’t half as much fun.

  ‘Lucy, you’ve gone off into a dream,’ scolded Maureen now. ‘Wake up and answer my question. Wasn’t Christmas marvellous?’

  ‘Yes,’ she sighed. ‘But put yourself in my position. Didn’t you have a job at my age?’

  ‘Yes, in a tobacconist’s, but I was only marking time until I found a husband. Isn’t there anybody you like? No young men in church with a decent income?’

  ‘None that I want to marry,’ said Lucy. ‘And I’m not sure they’d want to marry me, frankly.’

  ‘Why? You’re as good as they are,’ said her mother indignantly, eyes smouldering.

  Lucy squeezed the sheets, watching bubbles form from the Hudson’s soap powder and a grimy curd spread over the surface. ‘I’d thought of my own sweetshop but now Barker & Dobson are churning Everton toffees and chocolates out by the thousands, I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to work in the cinema instead.’

  ‘As what?’

  Lucy’s eyes gleamed. ‘Running the place?’

  Maureen snorted. ‘Tush, girl, you’ve got a hope!’

  ‘Hope’s what keeps people going, Mam.’

  ‘Aye! But you’ve got to keep your feet on the ground at the same time. Barney’s proud of the fact that he can afford to keep you at home.’ Her brows knitted.

  Lucy remembered how he’d suggested she and her mother join the Bible study group at the church, and the women’s group, as well as learning Welsh so they could enjoy its literature and singing. She wanted to please him but it was too much and she wanted to do something that she chose. Her mouth set determinedly. ‘I’m going to ask him about the cinema. If he says no I’ll turn on the tears. There’s not many men can stand to see
a woman cry.’ She winked.

  ‘You can but try,’ said Maureen, easing her back. ‘I’ve a feeling I’m not going to get a bit of peace from you about this until you do. You’ll probably catch him in if you run up after we’ve mangled this lot.’

  Lucy found Barney in the music room. He was sitting at the roll-topped desk sifting through some papers. He glanced up and gave her an absent-minded smile. She hesitated only a moment before going over to him. ‘Busy?’ She kissed his forehead, resting both hands on his shoulders.

  ‘Business.’ He patted one of her hands without looking up. ‘Is there something you want?’

  ‘Yes, I’d like a job in the cinema.’

  He dropped a sheet of paper and it fluttered to the floor. Lucy bent to pick it up but he got to it before she did and placed it back on the desk, covering it with another. He laced his hands on top of the pile and looked up at her, a baffled expression in his eyes. ‘Why aren’t you happy, Lucy? There are lots of girls, who’ve come from where you have, would give their eye teeth to be in your position.’

  His words annoyed her a little. ‘I presume you’re talking about the slums? But maybe it’s because I’ve been there that I need to do something to earn my own money. Even women from the middle classes are wanting jobs now. The men who would have been their husbands were killed in the war or are unable to work because of terrible injuries.’

  ‘You help your mother and your presence lights up this house and my life,’ he said patiently. ‘But I suppose you worry about ending up back there in the slums? People can lose money, it’s true.’

  ‘Yes!’ Lucy pounced on his words eagerly. ‘I’m glad you understand. So can you speak for me at the Trocadero? I’d like to work there – and that’s your fault, Uncle Barney, because when I was younger your playing made the cinema magic for me. It’s still magic! And there’s nothing I’d enjoy better than helping bring that magic to other people.’ He looked gratified. ‘Well, that’s a real nice thing to say, girlie! And I must admit I still get a great deal of pleasure out of helping to create that magic. I enjoy the whole cinema atmosphere.’