Our Lizzie

by Anna Jacobs

  “Aye. But if he’s got the money, I can hardly turn him away, can I?” Because it was all taking longer than James had expected and they both knew he had to sell one or two of the houses quickly to get more cash to finish the rest. And for all he had offered to let Emma pay off part of her purchase weekly, he was glad the jewellery had provided her and her sister with the money to buy the house outright, because with the best will in the world, he couldn’t have subsidised them. “All right, then. Give me a minute to wash my hands, then show him into my office.”

  * * *

  The following weekend Sam took Lizzie out to the cinema as usual, then on the way home, swung her round into the alley where he still lived in the house he had shared with his gran, keeping a firm hold of her hand as she tried to pull back.

  “I have to get home,” she said nervously as he opened the front door.

  “We need to talk. In private.”

  “Sam—”

  He chuckled, scooped her up into his arms and carried her inside, taking her by surprise, so that she could only let out a squeak of shock before the door was closed. “This is what I want to do for real,” he murmured against her throat as she lay in his arms, trembling a little. “I want to carry my bride across the threshold an’ shut the rest of the world outside.” And then do all the things he had dreamed of.

  “Oh, Sam, can’t we—wait a bit?”

  “Why?”

  “I’m only seventeen.”

  “Seventeen and a half now. A woman grown.” He set her down, but kept hold of her hand, stroking her fingers with his big rough thumb. “Aw, Lizzie, I need you to marry me now.” He drew her down on the couch, gritting his teeth against the urge to take her there and then, willing or not. He didn’t want to frighten her off. He’d seen over the years how stubborn she could be if she set her mind against something. “I want to be with you every night,” he growled in her ear. “You and me, husband and wife. And no bugger else! I want to come home and find you waiting, a meal on the table, a fire burning—not an empty house with dust in the corners.” He waved one hand at the neglected room.

  She didn’t say anything, but as usual nestled against him.

  He hid a smile. This was how to get to her. The cuddling. “An’ don’t tell me it’s easy for you, Lizzie love, going home night after night to her shouting at you.” He felt her shudder against him and pressed his advantage. “Wouldn’t you like to have your own home? No shouting? No fuss? Just you an’ me?”

  The picture he painted did have its attractions, Lizzie had to admit. And she loved it when he held her like this. She wished he’d say he loved her, like they did in the stories in the magazines she read now instead of the comics she had loved as a child. She sighed at that thought. She didn’t feel like a child, hadn’t for ages. But she didn’t feel quite a woman, either. “I suppose so, Sam.”

  A quick look of satisfaction crossed his face. “Can’t I at least tell folk we’re serious? Eeh, I want to put a big sign on you to warn all the other fellows off.” In a carefully thought-out gesture, he pulled a little box out of his pocket and took a ring from it. “Can’t we at least get engaged? Won’t you give me that much, Lizzie Kershaw?”

  She stared at the ring in amazement. “Engaged?”

  He held it out. “Yes. I got this for you. Do you like it?”

  “It’s beautiful.” It had a softer sheen than brass and the stone had a sparkle to it, catching the light from the one gas fitting overhead. “Is it real?”

  “Aye, lass. It’s a real diamond an’ the ring’s real gold. I’m not havin’ my wife wearin’ a brass one an’ going round with a dirty mark on her finger.”

  “Sam!” She stared at it in awe. “Oh, it must have cost a fortune!”

  “Nothin’s too good for my girl. Give us your hand, then.” He took the ring and slipped it on to her third finger. “A bit loose. We’ll go to Pearson’s next Saturday and arrange to have it made smaller. They’ve got a piece of wood with holes in to show the size of your finger. They’ll do the alterations for nothing because I bought the ring there.” He wasn’t daft enough to use one of the rings he and Josh picked up sometimes, though it’d have saved him money.

  Lizzie sat staring at her outstretched hand, her mouth half-open in shock, then she looked at him and tears filled her eyes. “Oh, Sam, you really do love me, don’t you? You never say it, but you do. Oh, Sam—”

  He nodded and picked up her hand, kissing it, then moving on to kiss her mouth, her soft, trembling lips. Go easy, lad, he told himself, as lust clamoured for release. It’s working, just as you planned, so don’t spoil it now. “I’m not one for fancy words, love. I reckon actions speak louder any day. But you’re my girl an’ I want to show the world that you are.”

  She nodded, feeling wanted, really wanted, for herself. “We could get engaged, then,” she said tentatively. “If you like?”

  “I do like, lass, I do. And you won’t keep me waiting too long to get wed, will you?”

  “Just a little longer,” she pleaded. “I need to get a bottom drawer ready.” She gave an embarrassed laugh. “Though you’ll be disappointed in me, Sam. I’m a rotten sewer. I can cook and clean and all that, but I can’t seem to sew straight to save my life.”

  “Who the hell cares about sewing?” He pressed his lips to hers in a long kiss.

  Lost in a glow of happiness, Lizzie responded more warmly than she ever had before.

  When they drew apart, he was breathing deeply. “Come on, lass. Better take you home or I’ll get carried away.” And anyway, if they were too late, the old hag would start saying things and he wasn’t having any dirty gossip about his wife-to-be. He looked at her, with her eyes shining and her face lit up, and said almost in surprise, “Eeh, you’re lovely when you look happy.”

  “Go on with you, Sam. I’m not lovely. I wish I were. For you.”

  “You’re the one I want. An’ you’ve got the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.”

  “Oh, Sam!” She sighed and laid her head against his shoulder. “You’re so kind to me.”

  As he walked home after leaving her at the front door, his face bore a look of savage triumph. They were going to tell her family they were engaged the following evening, and the old lady could just like it or lump it. After that, everything else would fall into place as he wanted. It always did when he made a plan and stuck to it. But he’d be glad when he didn’t need to fuss over her like this, he would that. He’d already had to face a lot of teasing from his mates about the visits to the cinema. It wasn’t right, a fellow running round after a slip of a lass. They should be the ones running round after you.

  * * *

  Two months later, in October, Blanche went upstairs and Emma waited in the kitchen after the evening meal. “Could I please have a word with you, Mrs. Kershaw? In the front room, perhaps?” She glanced at Percy, who already knew that she and her sister were about to give notice, and he nodded slightly.

  He watched Emma lead the way towards the front room, graceful and elegant as always, followed by his mother, who had surely grown thinner this past year? Certainly her expression had grown sourer and she’d had a bad cough last winter that had racked her for weeks.

  Lizzie looked at him in puzzlement. What was going on?

  Percy saw the question in her eyes, but didn’t enlighten her, just sat down and picked up the evening paper. She hesitated, then finished clearing the table. He shook the paper out and hid behind it, though he couldn’t read a word, so tense was he about what was going on in the front room. He had promised Emma to stay around, in case his mother made one of her fusses, as they were both sure she would do. It didn’t take much to set her off lately, and however tactfully Emma approached the subject of their leaving, Mam would take it as a personal affront.

  He sighed and stared blindly at the printed page. After the lodgers left, things would be worse than ever in this house. He would miss Emma so much—their little chats, her pretty face, the warmth of her smile. Eva a
nd Polly had already gone, and now that Lizzie and Sam were engaged, she would soon be leaving as well. And he was glad, for her sake. But his own future seemed very bleak. He stood up, letting the paper slide to the floor, and began fiddling with the things on the mantelpiece as he listened for noise from the front room.

  “What’s going on?” Lizzie asked, coming in with her hands damp and picking up the downstairs towel that was drying on the fireguard. The hands she was wiping were red from the washing soda and she looked cold—well, that scullery never seemed to warm up in the winter, however much they left the kitchen door open to let the heat from the fire through.

  He stared at her as if she’d spoken in a foreign language, then blinked his eyes back into focus and said curtly, “Emma’s giving notice to Mam. She and Miss Harper are leaving next week.”

  Lizzie’s face fell. “Oh, no! Mam’ll go mad.”

  “Aye. That’s why Emma asked me to stay in tonight—just in case, like.”

  “Why are they leaving? Where are they going?”

  “They’re getting a place of their own. Buying one of those new houses Cardwell’s putting up in Maidham Street.”

  “Oh.” Lizzie stared down at the cruet she had picked up from the table so that she could shake the crumbs off the tablecloth, but made no move to complete the task for a moment or two. When she realised she was standing gaping, she clicked her teeth in annoyance at herself, put the cruet set on the sideboard and started gathering the tablecloth together, to take it outside the back door and shake it. That was when she heard her mam’s voice raised in shrill protest.

  “She’s off!”

  “I’d better go and stop her making a fool of herself, I suppose,” Percy groaned.

  “I’ll finish here quickly and nip upstairs. She won’t want me around.”

  “You spend far too much time in that bedroom of yours. What are you going to do in the winter, Lizzie love?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll have moved out by then.” If she married Sam, she’d have her own house. For once in her life, she was trying to think things through, as Eva always did, but she wasn’t finding it easy. She knew, from things he’d said, that Sam wouldn’t be the sort of husband to help around the home, though he’d probably be a good provider, which was important. But she’d be left doing everything and she’d be on her own all day, too, not like at the shop. She’d miss the company dreadfully.

  But she did like babies and children, and she wanted very much to have a family of her own—well, one day she did. She’d love them a lot, cuddle them, play with them as her father had done with her—and not be anything at all like her mother. They’d be happy, her children would, and … She shook off the daydream, spread the tablecloth out again, shoved the cruet into the middle and rushed upstairs, wincing at the shrill cries still coming from the front room.

  * * *

  Percy found his mother berating a white-faced Emma, who was standing stiff with outraged dignity in front of the fireplace. It was a moment before he could get Meg’s attention and in the end he had to put an arm round her and pull her bodily back. “Mam, stop this!”

  She struggled against him, then gasped and stared at him, looking so wild and strange that his heart sank even further.

  “But they’re leaving! After all I’ve done for them, our Percy. Leaving!”

  “They’ve got a right to live where they want, Mam. And they’re giving you a week’s notice, aren’t they? That was the agreement.”

  It was as if she hadn’t heard him. “I’ve even let them keep that piano in the front room, let those children trail in for singing lessons—and as well as the noise, it all makes extra work, you know. And who does the work? Me, that’s who! They never wipe their feet properly, those children don’t, and they leave sticky fingermarks all over the place.” Meg gasped for breath and her voice rose even higher. “And now they’re going, leaving us. After all I’ve done!” She burst into tears, wailing more complaints into his chest.

  Percy looked across at Emma, hoping she’d read from his expression how sorry he was about all this. He saw the pity in her eyes and it was the last thing he wanted from her. Tamping down his own feelings, he jerked his head towards the door in an unmistakable signal for her to leave. She nodded and went, as quietly as she did everything else. Unlike this shrieking harridan struggling in his arms.

  * * *

  Upstairs Emma paused outside the door to Lizzie’s bedroom, which was open for once. “You’ve heard what’s happening—that we’re leaving?”

  Lizzie nodded.

  Emma sighed and leaned against the door for a minute. “I’m going to miss you, Lizzie. Blanche and I are moving into Maidham Street, number seven. I do hope you’ll come and see us there sometimes?”

  The girl’s face brightened. “I’d like that.”

  “Don’t forget then. I mean it.”

  “I’m sorry Mam’s being so—so awkward.”

  “We’d rather expected it. But it isn’t pleasant.” Emma listened to the sobbing from downstairs and shook her head as she turned to leave. “I’d better go and reassure my sister that I’m all right. I’m sorry your mother’s upset, but I won’t be bullied by anyone.” Not even by Sam Thoxby, who had stopped her in the street only today to ask if she needed help moving, though how he’d known that they were about to leave was more than she could tell, for she’d asked Percy not to mention it to anyone else.

  * * *

  It took Percy even longer than usual to calm his mother down. She kept hold of him, her bony fingers digging painfully into his flesh as she wept on his chest, beating on it now and then with one clenched fist. Then she would stop her weeping to shout a series of angry accusations about how the lodgers had taken advantage of her, how everyone took advantage of a poor widow who had no one to stand up for her.

  After a while, the weeping eased and she said venomously, “And it’s all Lizzie’s fault! She has a lot to answer for. She’d do anything to spite me, that one would.”

  Percy pushed her to arm’s length. “How on earth can this be Lizzie’s fault?”

  “She brought Sam into the house that evening. That’s when it all started. Since then, those two upstairs have been going out a lot and coming back full of themselves. They’ve been buying new things. I’ve seen the parcels. I should have realised something was going on. But then I’m always getting taken in. I’m too trusting, I am.” A brief pause for breath and she added, “If Lizzie hadn’t kept watch for him, I’d have found out what was going on then and given them notice to leave before they could do this to me.”

  Percy’s voice was stern. “Then I can only be glad Lizzie did keep watch. You have no right to spy on your lodgers, Mam, no right at all.”

  “I have every right. It’s my house, isn’t it? I can do what I want in my own house.”

  “It’s my name that’s on the rent book now, actually.”

  She brushed that aside, as she always did when things didn’t suit her. “Well, it’s the same thing. You can’t deny it’s my home. And if your father hadn’t died, it’d be his name on the rent book, not yours, then I’d feel safer. Why was he taken? Oh, God, why was he taken from me? I thought I’d be the one to go first. I wanted to go first.”

  Percy closed his eyes and prayed for patience as he tried to distract her. “Do you want to get some more lodgers, Mam?”

  She gulped and stared at him. “Of course I don’t want to. I didn’t want to get these two, either. It’s hard work, having lodgers is. But I have to do it, or I won’t get the pension when I’m old, then they’ll put me in the workhouse.”

  A thought had been hovering at the edges of Percy’s mind ever since he’d heard the Harpers were leaving and now he voiced it. “You don’t have to take in more lodgers, actually.”

  The torrent of words stopped for a moment and she stared at him. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I mean, you don’t have to bring money in, don’t have to work so hard. I’ve b
een thinking about it ever since Emma told me they were leaving.” He saw an accusation forming on her lips and said hastily, “She was worried you’d be upset. She was thinking of you.”

  “That sort only think about themselves. Don’t you be taken in by her fancy ways, Percy Kershaw, she’s not for such as you.”

  He ignored that. “Look, Mam, you’re not strong enough to look after lodgers, and anyway those stairs really give you trouble. I think we should move into a smaller house, somewhere that’s easier for you to keep nice.”

  Meg let out another of her wails of anguish. “That’s right! Throw me out of my home. I want to die in this house, you know I do. Your father brought me to it when we got married. All my children were born here. We laid Stanley out here, too. I can still see him lying there on that sofa. Bobbin Lane’s been my home for years and you have no right to ask me to leave. No right! You’d think a son would show more consideration for his widowed mother, but no one cares what becomes of me now. No one.”

  Percy’s frustration boiled up in a tide of bitterness that nearly scalded his throat. “You bloody well are leaving! I should have made you do it before. You aren’t strong enough to look after lodgers and you’ll feel a lot better if you’ve less to do.” Well, he hoped she’d feel better, act more sensibly. “So I’ll go and see Mr. Cuttler tomorrow about us getting another house, a smaller one, and—”

  “I’m not sharing a room with Lizzie! I’d kill myself first.” She clutched her meagre bosom dramatically.

  He stopped short, wondering if she had lost her mind. “What the hell has that got to do with anything?”

  “You’d never swear at me like this if your father were still alive. He wouldn’t let you.”

  “Answer my damned question!”

  But she chose to answer obliquely, contradicting her earlier words, as she often did. “Do you imagine I haven’t thought about finding somewhere smaller? Well, I have. Lots of times. But the smaller ones only have two bedrooms. She can’t share with you and our Johnny, so she’d have to share with me and I won’t—do—it!”