“Well, I don’t know,” said Lily, pretending to consider the situation, but ready to jump at the chance of another strong muscled body. “It must have been a big row for your father to throw you out, Eddie.”
“It wasn’t a big row, Mother. It was a misunderstanding, which I’m sure Mr Dockerty will apologise for when he’s thought it through.”
“He didn’t throw me out, Mrs Wilson,”said Eddie quietly. “I walked out because he had made a promise, then didn’t keep it. A man’s word is his bond as far as I’m concerned.”
“Very well, you can move in with us, but Irene you’ll stay put at your Aunty’s. I’m not having people thinking I’m running a bawdy house with all the comings and goings here.”
“Shall I help Isabel with making afternoon tea then, Mother?” Irene felt so relieved she wanted to kiss her stony-faced mother, but knew that the physical contact wouldn’t be welcome. Mother kept everyone at arm’s length if she could.
“Of course you can, Irene. Eddie can sit and keep your father company. Robert, two more of those trenches will do it, then I think I’ll set up my stall again on Monday.”
Irene stood behind the clock and watch counter at the Co-op, looking with pleasure at the little ‘wigwag’ clocks she had been allowed to order. They were charming time pieces. Each clock face had it’s own character; a smiling clown, a marionette, a Cheshire cat or a leaping frog and underneath set in a small casing was a pendulum that merrily swung from side to side like a happy dog wagging its tail. The supervisor, an old man in his sixties, had told her that they wouldn’t sell, but had given in to pleas of ordering some to prove to Irene how wrong she was. But the box she had just opened was the third in three weeks to be delivered, they had been selling like hot cakes at one pound, six shillings and nine pence.
It was only ten minutes away from her lunch break and Irene planned to eat her canteen meal of fried fish and mashed potatoes as quickly as she could, then amble around the market to look for a present for Isabel’s new baby. Isabel had given birth to a daughter only days after she and her husband had moved into the rented house in Southport. Eddie and Irene were planning to visit that weekend.
The ping of the lift signalled that it had stopped at the first floor and a lady who looked to be in her late forties walked along to Irene’s counter. She began to look into the display cabinet where Irene had placed a small array of wristlet watches on a satin covered tray. The lady was very smart in a blue, lightweight, ankle-length dress, a matching long-sleeve jacket, white cotton wrist-length gloves, white high heel pumps and a matching handbag. Her short shingled hair was pushed under a white crocheted hat.
Irene cleared her throat nervously. This was a woman who looked as if she was used to having the very best of everything, but the wristlet watches were eighteen carat gold, so Irene thought it would be helpful to point that out.
“Excuse me, Madam, may I help you? Those wristlet watches are the very latest from London, eighteen carat gold and very expensive, naturally. Would you like to try one on, Madam?”
“I haven’t actually come to purchase a watch, young lady,” the woman replied haughtily, her face grimacing in distaste as she looked at the shop girl before her.
“I’ve been told that Irene Wilson works on this floor and I would like to give a message to her.”
“I’m Irene Wilson, Madam,” Irene said, wondering who this elegant woman was, though it was beginning to dawn on her who she might be.
“I believe you may be able to get a message to my son. I’m Mrs Dockerty. Could you please tell Eddie that his father is ill and it’s imperative that he comes back home to be with him. Thank you Miss Wilson.” With that Irene’s future mother-in-law walked back to wait for the lift.
She was left with a feeling of disbelief. What an arrogant woman. She had known that Irene was Eddie’s intended, but she couldn’t even be bothered to make some kind of effort towards her.
Irene, who was always slow to anger, felt her face begin to go hot and her body trembled with emotion. Give Eddie a message indeed. Who did his mother think she was, a telegraph woman?
It spoilt her day. The pleasure she’d had when she saw that her wigwags were selling and picking out a present for the baby didn’t make up for the distress she felt by meeting Eddie’s mother in the way she had. She was still feeling bitter as she climbed onto the bus that evening to Wallasey. No one deserved that kind of treatment just because she was the girlfriend of her son.
Eddie wasn’t in when she got back to Peartree Cottage. No one was at home, but her mother had left a note on the kitchen table saying that her Dad had been rushed into hospital, as he couldn’t get his breath. All thoughts of the sour-faced woman flew out of Irene’s head as she ran the mile and a half to Victoria Hospital, only to find when she got there that her lovely father was dead.
Her mother was inconsolable. She babbled inconsequentially of how she had never loved him enough, how she hadn’t really wanted to marry him because she had been in love with somebody else. Irene put it down to the grief that mother was feeling, after watching her terrified husband trying to get air into his lungs. She brought her mother back home in a taxi, which both could ill afford.
Eddie was waiting for them on their return, neatly scrubbed from his ablutions in the water butt outside. Peartree Cottage had neither bathroom, gas or electricity and kettles had to be boiled on the kitchen fire if anyone wanted a wash. He had known something was wrong because he had seen Lily’s note when he had got in from work. He couldn’t read the note because Eddie couldn’t read, having spent a lot of time as a truant in his childhood, but he knew the word Irene at the beginning and Mother at the end.
He made the two sobbing women a comforting cup of tea, then set about frying eggs and bacon for everyone’s supper. Irene and Lily said they couldn’t eat, but Eddie insisted that they ate something, because they would need to keep their strength up over the next few days.
After they had finished their meal and Lily decided she would go to her bedroom, Irene suddenly remembered that she had promised her Aunt Miriam that she would be home on the ten o’ clock bus.
“Eddie,” she cried. “I can’t leave my mother, I won’t be able to go to work tomorrow either, but Aunt Miriam will be worrying where I’ve got to. Oh I wish we had a telephone.”
“I’ll go if you want and stay at your aunt’s tonight, then if you write me a note I’ll drop it through the Co-op letterbox on my way to work in the morning. They’ll understand why you’ve not gone in.”
“Oh thank you, Eddie, and what shall we do about Isabel, she’ll have to be told that Papa has gone?”
“You’ll have to send her a letter or maybe we could tell her together when we go over on Sunday.”
“I don’t know what to do, Eddie. I suppose a letter will be a shock to her, though, so perhaps we’ll wait until Sunday. You’re such a comfort, Eddie, thanks.” She leaned over and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
“Well I suppose I’d better be off then. Strange to be going back to the village and not seeing my parents anymore.”
“Eddie, oh Eddie, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten to give you a message. Your mother came into the store today and told me to tell you that your father’s ill.”
“How did my mother know you worked at the Co-op?” asked Eddie, puzzled. “I’ve never told anyone where you were working or if I had I would have told them it was at the Saltbury’s store.”
“I don’t know how things get round, Eddie, but it was definitely your mother, though I thought she was rather rude.”
“No, it’s just her way, Irene. My Mum is a lovely person, but she can be like that with people she doesn’t know. One day you’ll grow to love her like I do, I’m sure.”
Mmm, thought Irene. His mother is all fur coat and no knickers as far as I’m concerned.
Eddie set off to travel to Aunt Miriam’s by walking along the roads to Woodside Terminus, as it was light enough to see in the middle of July. He wanted to
have some time to think about his mother’s message. It must be his father’s ticker that was giving him trouble: too many fags, too much alcohol and not enough exercise. His father never walked anywhere, everywhere he went was by car. How would the old man receive him if he turned up just for a visit? Probably throw something at him for leaving him in the lurch.
Eddie had got himself a job at a scrap metal merchants. The boss, Gerry Fielden, put him in charge of the float money. Two other men went ahead of the scrap wagon knocking on doors to drum up trade. Then Eddie would appear and pay the housewife for her rags, or her old dolly tub, copper boiler or mangle, paying as much as five shillings for a mangle because in some of the better off areas they were very much in demand. At the end of the day, the scrap metal and rags were weighed in the yard and each man then received their pay. The work took Eddie around the posher areas of the Wirral and sometimes he went through the Mersey tunnel to Liverpool.
He missed the familiar tinkle of trowels, though, the sound he’d grown up with since he was a boy. Sometimes if he passed a building site, he would stop the wagon and watch the brickies at their work. Maybe he’d been hasty, should he give it another go, perhaps his father was sorry and he’d move back home again?
By the time he’d caught the Heswall bus, Eddie had made his mind up. He would move back into his parents’ home if they gave him permission to marry Irene. If not, they wouldn’t have a son and heir, because he wasn’t going to give up his girl.
CHAPTER FOUR
Eddie didn’t turn up to his parent’s house until Saturday afternoon, by which time his mother was beginning to think that the dratted girl hadn’t passed on her message, but Eddie had to be there for Irene and her mother. He had taken Friday off work after staying over at Aunt Miriam’s home, delivered Irene’s note to the Co-op, then made his apologies to Gerry Fielden saying he had to take time off for family reasons.
After checking on Irene, he then went to the Funeral Directors to make arrangements for Charlie’s burial. Neither of the two women felt up to doing that. Irene was heartbroken at losing her Papa and spent the day with her mother talking over old times.
Irene remembered how, as a little girl she would climb into one of the pear trees that they grew in the orchard. The sturdy branches had become a refuge from when her mother or sister wanted her to run a message up to the nearest shop, or worse still want to brush her long hair and twist it into ringlets. Papa always knew where she would be though and would creep stealthily under the trees, then catch her unawares. When she was a teenager he made her a bench to sit on, and on many a fine weekend in the late Spring she would do her sewing, watching the pear blossom blowing about as if it was snow.
She remembered how distressed her father had been when he was made redundant from Cammel Laird shipyard and he could no longer afford her school fees. It was if he had diminished in front of her eyes as man of the house and provider. His wife’s tone got sharper and she’d had to sell her garden produce from a stall on the dock road outside. That was when Charlie Wilson’s health started to go downhill, the shock of losing his employment brought his illness to the fore.
Around two o’ clock on Saturday afternoon, when Eddie had made sure that there was nothing more he could do for the bereaved women, he caught the bus to Whaley Lane, which was just around the corner from his parent’s home.
Gladys was sitting in the morning room, which looked over a patio and a small pond in the large back garden. She was reading a fashion magazine wondering what style of outfit she was going to wear at Caitlin’s wedding and whether she should wear pale blue, which was her favourite colour, or lilac, which was quite a modern shade.
Ellen, the maid of all work, met Eddie in the hallway.
“I’ve just put the kettle on, Eddie, shall I bring yer in a cup of tea?”
Her tone was as if he hadn’t been away for more than an hour or so. She nodded in the direction of the morning room and then pointed up to the ceiling with an exaggerated sigh.
“Himself ’s poorly, have yer come to see him then?”
“That will be all, Ellen,” said Gladys, after she heard her maid talking to someone and had walked into the hallway to see who had come to call. She looked delighted when she saw her eldest son.
“Darling, you’ve come back home again. Isn’t it strange that I told Ellen only yesterday to make up your bed again? Come into the morning room and let me have a proper look at you. Where have you been, you silly boy?”
“It’s only a flying visit, Mum, sorry. I’ve got to get back to Wallasey, Irene’s father died the other day.”
“You mean you’re living at this young woman’s house?” said his mother aghast, ignoring the mention of Irene’s father having passed on. “Such impropriety, Eddie, I never thought it of one of my sons.”
“We’re not living together, Mother,” he answered sharply. “Irene stays at her aunt’s in Seaview Lane, I’ve been living with her Mum and Dad.”
“Oh, well never mind, you’ll be coming back to live here soon, won’t you, Eddie? Now that your father’s ill you must come back and see that the business is running properly.”
“I’m only coming back if I get permission to marry Irene, otherwise one of my brothers will have to do the overseeing. Terry or Mickey will have to do.”
“No, no Eddie. Your brothers are far too young to have such responsibility. No, it must be you and I’m sure your father will agree with me.”
“Here’s your tea, Eddie,” said Ellen, her ears flapping as she brought in a silver tray with a china cup and saucer. “Coming back to stay are yer? Missed yer while you’ve been away.”
“Seeing as the kettle has boiled you can make me a cup of coffee, Ellen, then get back to whatever you were doing before Eddie came.”
His mother raised her eyebrows upwards and shrugged her shoulders.
“What can you do? Are you going to see your father now that you’re here?”
“I suppose I’d better. Shall I go up on my own or will you come too?”
“No, you go darling, it’s probably better that way.”
Eddie drank his tea, then bounded up the stairs two at a time. His father sat in his bed hunched up on a pile of pillows, his breathing sounded harsh and his face was red and blotchy.
“So you’re back then?” he growled, as Eddie put his head around the door. “Come to say you’re sorry now your daddy’s at death’s door?”
“That bad is it?” said Eddie lightheartedly. “I thought you might be skiving, taken to your bed for a few days.”
“Always the joker. Anyway it’s yer mother that wants yer back. She misses you, it’s not me.”
“Oh, so you’re quite happy to let the business fall around your ears, while you sit in bed letting it happen?”
“I agree Terry and Mickey have no experience in dealing with the men, but seeing as you’ve made the effort, it looks to me as if yer want to come back again. If yer do, though, it’s on my terms. I’ll not give you permission to marry, as far as I’m concerned you’re far too young.”
“But not too young to be running your business for you?”
“You’re quite the clever dick, aren’t yer son? This is just a bout of indigestion I’ve got ’cos of that bloody Ellen and her cooking. Doctor’s told me to rest in bed and lay off the cigs and whisky, so I’ll be right as rain in a couple of days.”
“Fine, then it looks as if you don’t need me.”
Eddie went back down the stairs again.
“Still in a grumpy mood, is he?” asked Gladys when her son returned to the morning room. “Look, Eddie, I’ve had a word with the doctor and he thinks your dad is troubled with his heart. He wants to have him in hospital for tests, but your father won’t hear of it. Your father really needs you here, but of course he’ll never say.”
“I told him I won’t be coming back to work for him, unless he gives me permission to marry Irene.”
“Oh darling, you both can be so stubborn. You’ve eighteen
months to go before you’re twenty-one, then we can’t stop you marrying this shop girl. Come back home. Do it for me and then we’ll see what happens. Please, Eddie, I’ve got Caitlin’s wedding to see to and I really don’t want the family disunited at this moment in time.”
Eddie looked around at the spacious room with its elegant furnishings and the French windows that looked out onto the lovely garden and its little pond, then thought about Peartree Cottage with it’s sparse interior, lack of facilities and the problems of keeping the place warm. It would be good to get back to some home comforts, even if Ellen’s cooking left a lot to be desired. Irene could move back from her aunty’s to keep her mother company and they could have a proper courtship from then on.
It was like living a nightmare for Irene after her father’s funeral. Her mother would not be consoled and wandered around the house in a daze, whilst Irene did her best to comfort her. Eddie had left the day after he and Irene had gone to Southport to break the news to Isabel, so it was hard being left alone with Lily, who constantly cried that she hadn’t loved her husband enough and that he would still be there if she had.
Irene was worried. She didn’t want to leave her mother on her own, but the Co-op would be expecting her back as soon as possible and she wasn’t getting any pay. Her mother took no interest in her garden, though the Victoria plums were falling off the trees and the cabbages were beginning to bolt in the ground. She wouldn’t be cajoled into manning her produce stall outside the front gate, even if Irene were to offer her a hand. It was Eddie who came up with the solution. Why not take in lodgers again? Put an advert in the local shop and hopefully that would bring in a much needed income for the old dear.
And he had been right, for within a few days a local man with Irish relatives who visited Wallasey for a few weeks every year, answered the card that had been placed in the shop window. He was looking for somewhere for them to stay, as his cottage was too small to accommodate them.
Shattered Dreams Page 5