by Maureen Lee
Most nights when Bel wasn’t looking, Flo slipped away. She enjoyed sitting on the balcony, staring at the sky, listening to the sounds by the pool, drinking wine.
When she got home, she might do something with her backyard, paint the walls a nice colour, buy some plants and a table and chairs, turn it into one of them patio things. It would be pleasant to sit outside in the good weather. The flat could get stuffy when it was hot.
That’s if the flat remained hers. Oh, Lord, Bel would be cross if she knew she was worrying about the flat again. Flo rested her arms on the balcony and stared down at the pool. Even at this hour children were still up. Two little boys, one about Tom O’Mara’s age, were splashing water at each other in the shallow end. If only she could have brought Tom with her. He would have had the time of his life. Instead of dancing with men old enough to be her father, or sitting alone on a balcony, she could have been down at the pool with Tom. It seemed a normal, everyday thing to do, to bring your grandson on holiday, but the things that normal, everyday people did seemed to have passed her by.
Flo sat back in her chair and sighed. Another few days and they could go home. She couldn’t wait, though she wouldn’t let Bel know she was homesick. She would laugh and smile, and look cheerful, pretend to be having a great time, make the best of things as she always had.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a star shoot across the sky. It disappeared into the infinite darkness or was it just her imagination that she could see the faintest, barely discernible burst of yellow, which meant that millions and millions of miles away there’d been an almighty explosion?
The idea made her shudder, and she remembered being told as a child that God had created the world in seven days. “But did He create the universe as well, Dad?
Did He create the sun and the moon and the stars at the same time?” She couldn’t remember what his answer had been.
It was ages since she’d thought about Dad. Living in Burnett Street had been perfect when he was alive and Martha had yet to assume the role of Being In Charge.
Flo had never planned on getting married, but had just known that one day she would and that she would have children, two at least. Then, as if the shooting star had struck its target, Flo felt as if every muscle in her body had instantly wasted, as if every bone had turned to jelly. All that was left was her heart, which pounded like a hammer in her cavernous chest.
She’d spent her entire adult life in the way she was spending this holiday! Making the best of things, pretending to enjoy herself. Waiting for it to end!
“Oh, Lord!” The awful feeling passed as quickly as it had come, but in the mad scramble of thoughts that followed she knew that she should have made the best of things in a more practical way, by marrying Gerard Davies, for instance, or almost any one of those other young servicemen. It was no use blaming Martha. It was Flo’s own fault that she’d wasted her life.
The basement flat felt unusually chilly when she arrived home from Spain to find three letters waiting for her on the mat. She went through them on her way to the kitchen to put the kettle on, aching for a cup of tea made with ordinary leaves instead of those silly teabags.
Two were bills, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw the name and address of a solicitor in Castle Street on the third. She’d never had a letter from a solicitor before, and her hands were trembling as she tore it open, convinced that the little Fritzes were demanding formally that she quit the flat.
The heading was enough to make her burst into tears.
“Re: Fritz Erik Hofmannsthal (deceased).”
He was dead! Mr Fritz was dead—and not one of his children had bothered to let her know. Flo forgot the tea and poured a glass of sherry instead. Her imagination ran riot as she thought of all the different ways he might have died, none of them pleasant. She’d like to bet he’d wanted to return to William Square and be with her, but his children hadn’t let him. Lovely, long-cherished memories flicked through her brain: the laundry on Tuesdays when he’d brought cream cakes, the day Stella had taken the photograph of him and his girls outside the family had just come back from Anglesey and seemed so happy. How strange and cruel life could be that it should all have turned so sour. She recalled their first weekend in the Isle of Man, two old friends comfortably together at last.
It was a long time before she could bring herself to read the letter, to learn that dear Mr Fritz had bequeathed her the leasehold of the basement flat, as well as the launderette in Smithdown Road. The letter finished, “We would be obliged if you would telephone for an appointment so that arrangements can be made for various papers to be signed.”
“Mr Hofmannsthal’s children are seeking to question the validity of his will,” the solicitor informed her. He was younger than expected, not the least bit pompous, and from his build and his broken nose, looked like a rugby player or a boxer. “But as same was dictated in my presence ten years ago while my client was in full possession of his senses, there is no question of it not being valid.”
“I don’t think the little Fritzes liked me very much,” Flo said, in a small voice. “Least, not since they stopped being little.”
“They like you even less now, which isn’t surprising.
You’re very much the fly in the ointment. They want the house in William Square put on the market, but it won’t fetch anything like it would have done had the basement been included.” The solicitor smiled, as if this pleased him enormously.
“I’m sorry,” Flo said weakly.
“Good heavens, Miss Clancy!” he exploded. “Sorry is the very last thing you should be. It’s what my client, Fritz Hofmannsthal, wanted, and I’m sure he had the best reason in the world for doing so.”
Flo felt herself go pink, wondering what Mr Fritz might have told him. “Do I still have to look after the other launderettes?” she enquired.
The solicitor was so outraged to discover that she’d been “acting as manager”, as he put it, for six whole months without even so much as a thank-you from the little Fritzes, that he suggested putting in a claim against the estate for “services rendered”. “We’ll demand ten pounds a week for the period involved, and probably end up with five. Will that suit you?”
Flo was about to say she didn’t want a penny, but changed her mind. Even if she gave away the money, it was better than the little Fritzes having it. “Five pounds a week would be fine,” she said.
The whole thing went into another of Flo’s invisible boxes marked “Secret”. If people found out, they would wonder why Mr Fritz had remembered her so generously.
She owned her own property. She owned her own business. But no one would ever know.
In his day Edward Eddison had been a professional magician and had appeared halfway down the bill in theatres all over the country. When he married Bel Szerb in a register office two months after their holiday in Spain, he produced two white doves from his sleeve, which fluttered around the room, much to the annoyance of the registrar who disapproved of confetti, let alone live birds.
Bel, gorgeous in lavender tulle and a feathered hat, screamed with laughter when a bird settled happily on her head.
Flo, still shaken by the strange, unsettling thoughts she’d had in Spain and the loss of Mr Fritz, felt depressed when the ceremony was over, and Bel and Eddie departed to Bournemouth on their honeymoon. The newly-weds intended to live in Eddie’s house in Maynard Street, and Bel planned on doing the place up from top to bottom. Flo tried to cheer herself up by decorating her own flat. She painted the walls white and the big wooden beams across the middle of the room black. The plaques Bel had bought her in Spain went well against the glossy surface, and when she mentioned this to her ladies, they presented her with several more. She painted the little yard a pretty rose pink, bought garden furniture and plant-holders, but when it came to new furniture for inside, she couldn’t bring herself to part with a thing.
After all, Mr Fritz and Jimmy Cromer had struggled downstairs with the settee a
nd chair out of Stella’s sitting room, as well as the big sideboard, which was probably an antique—if the little Fritzes had known it would probably have gone for auction, along with the lovely oak wardrobe and chest-of-drawers in the bedroom. As for the brass bed, she’d no intention of changing it for one of those padded-base things like they’d had in Spain—it had been like sleeping on wooden planks. She even felt quite fond of the little rag rug in front of the fire, which had been there when she arrived. She made do with buying pictures for the walls and armfuls of silk flowers to arrange in vases, and a nest of round tables to put the vases on. The big table she folded against the wall because she rarely used it. Nowadays, she ate on the settee in front of the television. Last Christmas, Bel had bought her a coffee table for this very purpose, an ugly thing, Flo thought secretly, with legs like clumps of giant onions.
The only light that glimmered through this dark period was her grandson Tom, seven years old and a continual thorn in the side of Nancy O’Mara, just like his grandad, Tom came and went as he pleased, no matter what Nancy told him. Hugh, of whom Flo saw little these days, appeared to have given up on his son and took no interest. On Sundays, Flo would return from Mass to find Tom sitting on the steps outside her flat, ready to spend the day with her. She took him to matinee performances at the cinema. Once she got used to the idea that she was her own boss and could take time off whenever she pleased, she and Tom sometimes went to football matches to see Everton or Liverpool play.
Tom was at Flo’s place too often to be kept hidden in one of her secret boxes, so Bel got used to finding him there, though she thought it most peculiar. “You’re obsessed with the O’Maras, Flo,” she hissed. “Tommy, Hugh, now little Tom.”
Gradually the dark period passed. It was a relief when the unpleasant middle-aged couple on the ground floor moved out, and a beautiful black girl, still a teenager, with two small children, moved in. But Flo was shocked to the core when she discovered that Chairman was one of the women who took up position along the railings of the square each night. Even so, it was hard not to say, “Good morning,” or “Isn’t it a lovely day?” or “We could do with some rain, couldn’t we?” when they came face to face. The two became rather wary friends, although Chairman continually felt the need to defend her doubtful and precarious lifestyle. The husband walked out on me. No one’ll give me a job with two kids under school age. How else am I supposed to feed “em and pay the rent?” she demanded aggressively, the first time she came down to the basement flat.
“Don’t go on at me, luv,” Flo said mildly. “It’s your life.
I haven’t uttered a word of criticism, have I?”
“I can see it in your eyes. You’re disgusted.”
“No, I’m not, luv. The disgust is in your own eyes. I think you’re ashamed, else you wouldn’t go on about it so much.”
Charmian stormed out, but returned the following night to say, “You’re right, but I don’t know another way to keep me head above water.”
Flo said nothing. As the months rolled by, she listened patiently while Charmian struggled loudly and vocally with her conscience. When the woman who worked the morning shift in the launderette gave in her notice, Flo casually mentioned it to her upstairs neighbour. “There’ll be a job going the Monday after next, eight till two. The pay isn’t bad, enough for the rent and to keep two kids without too much of a struggle.”
Charmian glared at her. “Is that a hint?”
“No, luv, it’s an offer.” Flo shrugged. “It’s up to you if you take it.”
“What about the owner? He mightn’t want an ex-pro working in his bloody launderette.”
The girl scowled, but she hated what she was doing and Flo could tell that she was tempted. “The owner will go on my recommendation.”
“And you’d recommend me when you know . . . ”
Two large tears rolled down the satiny cheeks. “Oh, Flo!”
Eddie Eddison didn’t last long. He died a happy man in the arms of his glamorous wife only eighteen months after their wedding. Bel was left with a hefty weekly pension, a gold Cortina saloon, and immediately began to take driving lessons.
Charmian gave up her job when she married the emergency plumber, Herbie Smith, who moved into the ground-floor flat with his ready-made family.
Unlike his dad, Tom O’Mara didn’t desert his friend Flo when he started comprehensive school. He was a cocky little bugger, full of confidence and sure of his place in the world. It didn’t bother him being seen going to the pictures on Sunday afternoons with a middle-aged woman, or two middle-aged women if Bel decided to come. Bel had transferred her affections from Gregory Peck to Sean Connery.
1983
When his dad died Tom was fifteen, and the cockiness, the confidence, turned out to be nothing but a sham.
The firm in Anfield swore that the accident had been caused by negligence on the part of their workman, Hugh O’Mara. The house he was rewiring was dripping with damp: he’d been a fool to try fitting a plug in a socket that was hanging off the wall, the existing wiring having been installed half a century before. Knowing O’Mara, he’d probably had only half his mind on the job. His heart hadn’t been in it for years. He was usually in either a trance or a daydream, the boss was never sure.
Anyroad, the stupid sod had been thrown across the room, killed instantly.
Flo didn’t go to the funeral. She couldn’t have stood it if Nancy, the Welsh witch, had behaved as she had outside the gates of Cammell Laird’s, weeping and wailing and making an exhibition of herself. At least she’d had a claim on Tommy, but she’d none on Hugh.
It was as if Hugh had already been dead a long time, Flo thought, strangely unmoved, as if she had already mourned his loss. Tom, though, was distraught. He came into the launderette after the funeral, his face red and swollen as if he’d been crying for days. Flo took him into her cubicle out of the way of her ladies’ curious eyes.
“No one wants me, Flo,” he wept. The mam walked out, me dad went and died on me, and Gran doesn’t like me.”
He was almost as tall as her. Flo’s heart ached as she stroked his bleak, tearstained face. If only her own history could have been rewritten, how would things have turned out then? “I like you, luv,” she whispered.
“Promise not to die, Flo. Promise not to go away like everybody else.” He buried his face in her shoulder.
“We’ve all got to die sometime, luv. But I won’t go away, I promise that much. I’ll always be here for you.”
Tom took a long time to recover from the loss of his dad. When he did, there was a callousness about him that saddened Flo, a chill in his green eyes that hadn’t been there before. He left school before he could sit his O levels and moved out of his gran’s house to class down in the homes of various friends, sleeping occasionally on Flo’s settee if he was desperate. He got a job helping out at St John’s market. “I’m going to start a stall meself one day,” he boasted. “There’s no way I’m working for someone else all me life, not like me dad.”
He brought her presents sometimes: a portable wireless for the kitchen, expensive perfume, a lovely leather handbag. She accepted them with a show of gratitude, although she was worried sick that they were stolen. He even offered to get her a colour telly at half the list price.
“No ta, luv.” She would have loved a colour telly, but felt it might encourage the criminal tendencies she was convinced he had.
Bel was doing her utmost to persuade her friend to retire in May, when she turned sixty-five. “You’ve worked nonstop since you were thirteen, Flo,” she said coaxingly.
“That’s fifty-two long years now. It’s time to put your feet up, like me.”
Tact had never been one of Bel’s stronger virtues: the reason behind her solicitude for Flo’s welfare was obvious. “You only want me to retire so you’ll have company during the day.”
“True,” Bel conceded. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.”
The launderette provided
a good, steady income, and Flo had no intention of giving up, not while she remained fit and well, though she got tired if she was on her feet for too long. Her ladies had changed over the years, but they were still the irrepressible, good-humoured Scousers she loved. Nowadays not all were poor: they went on holiday to places like Majorca and Torremolinos and brought brasses back for Flo’s walls.
When the letter came from the property firm in London offering to buy her out for twenty-five thousand pounds, her first instinct was to refuse. The firm was acting for a client who wished to turn the entire block into a supermarket. But the offer had come as a boon to Flo’s neighbours. Hardly anyone ordered coal at a coal office, these days, when they could phone from home.
Who’d buy wallpaper and paint from a little shop that had to charge the full price when it could be got for much less from a big do-it-yourself store? The watch-repairer, the picture-framer, the cobbler all reported that business was at an all-time low. Flo couldn’t bring herself to turn down the offer and spoil things for those who were desperate to take it.
There were thousands of pounds in the bank now and not much to spend it on. Flo went to see the solicitor in Castle Street and made a will. She’d never thought she’d have property and money to leave behind, but she knew who she wanted to have it. She put the copy at the bottom of the papers in the bureau—one of these days, she must clear everything out. There was stuff in there she’d sooner people didn’t know about when she died.
She bought the coveted colour television, a microwave oven, because they seemed useful, and a nice modern music centre, hoping that the man in Rush-worth and Draper’s didn’t think a woman of her age foolish when she chose a dozen or so records: the Beatles, Neil Diamond, Tony Bennett. She didn’t feel old, but later the same day, when she was wandering around Lewis’s department store, she saw an elderly woman, who looked familiar with rather nice silver hair, coming towards her. As they got closer, she realised she was walking towards a mirror and that the woman was herself. She was old! What’s more, she looked it.