CHAPTER FIVE
Eddie was kept on at the flour mill site after the drains and footings had been completed.
The foreman liked the way he worked, not always looking for breaks from his toil like some did, so Eddie was employed on the brick work later, a job that he really enjoyed.
He would call on Irene each evening after she had returned from work. Lily was now in charge of cooking and a hot meal was what they both needed at the end of the day.
The events of the snowbound night were never repeated, Irene being fearful that she might get pregnant and Eddie wanting to show his respect and regard for his girl.
So it came as a bit of a shock for both of them when Irene didn’t get her monthly. Eddie had thought that a girl couldn’t get pregnant the first time they had intercourse. Irene knew you could because it had happened to her sister Isabel, but had hoped that lightning wouldn’t strike in the family twice. Lily was going to be mortified that it had happened to both her daughters, especially when she had given permission for Eddie to stay that night.
“Oh well, at least your father will give his permission now,” said Irene thankfully after she told Eddie that she thought she might be expecting. “Perhaps you could arrange for me to come and visit your family. It will be the first grandchild, won’t it, so they’re bound to be pleased?”
“Not the first grandchild, Irene, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter the other day. But I know my father, he still won’t give his permission even if it means you having the child out of wedlock. He can be stubborn, as you know, and this won’t change his mind.”
“Oh no,” cried Irene, putting her head into her hands as the import of Eddie’s words sank in.
“Don’t worry,” he said, patting her shoulder awkwardly. “I’ll be twenty-one by then. It’s a good job that you’re already over twenty-one, because I couldn’t see your mother giving permission for our marriage either.”
“Why Eddie, my mother thinks the world of you, at least she’s never said anything different to me.”
“She resents me, Irene. She’s said a few things to me out of your hearing, thinks you should have married some other bloke instead.”
“That’ll be Evan, he was a distant cousin and he used to walk me home from school. His father’s a professor over in Liverpool and when the family first came to the area from Wales, they lived in that old house across the road. When will you tell your family, Eddie? You never know they might change their minds and pay something towards the wedding.”
“Don’t bank on it, Irene. In fact there might only be me and you there and we’ll have to bring our witnesses in off the street!”
J.C. went mad when Eddie told him that Irene was expecting and it brought on another turn, so that he had to take to his bed.
“See what you’ve done,” Gladys said, after the doctor left a little later.“Don’t you think we’ve enough to put up without you going and getting your shop girl pregnant. Don’t think we’ll give you permission to marry, Eddie, you’ll have to wait until you’re twenty-one.”
“Exactly what my father said not an hour ago, Mother, and so you won’t mind if I pack a suitcase again and go to live with my girl.”
He’d had it with the lot of them, he thought, as he caught the bus down to Birkenhead. Even Sheena was to have a wedding, though this time it wouldn’t be a grand affair. Eddie hoped that Irene had told her mother, because he was banking on her to give him a bed. It would be so easy too to get to work each day, because the flour mill was only across the way.
But Lily wasn’t pleased to say the least and they had to endure her scolding for the next couple of days. It was separate rooms and separate beds, though as Eddie said jokingly to Irene, the damage was already done!
A few evenings later, when Lily was doing her rounds outside, checking the greenhouse and the hen house area for predatory rats, Irene asked Eddie when they would be getting married.
“I would have thought your father would have given permission by now, Eddie. Didn’t you tell him I’ll be nearly six months gone by the time you’re twenty one? Why not ask your Mum to sign the papers? She’s a woman, surely she’ll have some sympathy towards me having to get married with a bump in the front?”
“Mum won’t go against my father, Irene, and now I’ve left home he’ll never speak to me again. No, unfortunately you’ll have to find a dress that’s got a lot of material in it, but will it matter, there won’t be anybody to see us get married anyway?”
So Irene had to be content with that and carried on working for the next few months to bring some money in. Though Eddie was working and Lily now manned her produce stall outside again, they always seemed to be on the bread line.
A month before Irene was to give her notice in at work, a young lady stood before her at the clock and watch counter. She was smartly dressed in a calf-length floral summer frock, her dark hair was cut into a short bob and she smiled a little sadly at Irene.
“Are you Irene, Eddie’s fiancé?” she asked.
“Yes, who am I speaking to?”
“I’m Sheena, his sister. I’ve got a message for him from my mother and I wondered if you would pass it on.”
“Of course.”
“Could you tell him that his mother wants to see him?”
“I can do, but I’m not sure that he’ll come and see her. You can see the condition I’m in, can’t you, and he’s not happy he can’t marry me until he’s twenty-one.”
“Yes, I’m sorry Irene, but my wedding has had to be postponed also. I wanted Eddie to hear this from Mum, but Father passed away in the night.”
“Oh,” said Irene, wondering whether she should give this girl her condolences. It would be two-faced if she did, but it was only polite to do so after all.
“I’ll let Eddie know when I see him this evening. I’m sorry, Sheena, I lost my father last year so I know what you must be going through.”
The girl said thank you and turned on her heel to make her way out of the department store. Irene was left feeling disconcerted by her visit, she was going to be related soon after all.
Eddie was shocked and very bitter when Irene gave him the message.
“I could have been there for him if he hadn’t have been so cantankerous, helped him with sorting out the finances if he had let me. But no, he had to be the boss, wanted no help from anyone and look what’s happened now? Mother a widow, in that poor little house with no income that I know of. Who’s going to look after her now that I’m not there?”
“I’m sorry, Eddie, but you have got other brothers who live at home, they’ll have to take care of her. You’ve me and the baby to see to when it comes.”
“Yes and that wouldn’t have happened if I’d still been working for Dad and not at the flour mill. Once you’ve had the baby, there’ll only be my money coming in.”
“Oh so you’re saying you wished I hadn’t got pregnant and we could have waited another few years before we got married,” said Irene defensively. “We’d already been courting for four years, Eddie, if that is what you could call it.”
“What do you mean by that?” he said angrily.
“Well, for the first two years we only ever saw each other on a Saturday, that was if you deigned to turn up to the dance at all. You wouldn’t come and meet my aunty and it was me who pushed for a proposal of marriage by making you jealous that night.”
“Me jealous, never,” he blustered. “Anyway, if we’re going to start rowing I’m off to my mother’s. I’ll need to be there to help with arrangements anyway. Perhaps you’ll be in a better mood when I come back.”
He went to his bedroom and Irene could hear him throwing some things into his suitcase. She went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea.
Gladys sat in the small living room at the back of the semi, her face blank as she sat unseeingly and her children sat in silence not knowing what to do. Eddie was a breath of fresh air as he came in through the kitchen door, taking a look at their grieving faces,
knowing that he would have to be the one to get them organised if anything was to be done.
“Right,” he said.“What’s been done up to now? Death certificate, undertaker, is Dad at the hospital or upstairs?”
Caitlin stood up and volunteered the information that their father had been rushed into hospital the night before and that was where his body was. That she had telephoned the undertaker and he was awaiting instructions as to where the burial would be.
“I should imagine he’ll be buried at St.Winefred’s then, unless anyone has any objections to that?”
His mother stirred herself and said that was what their father had wanted, then lapsed back into her silent state, just staring into space.
“Caitlin, I think you should get Mother upstairs and get her to lie down for a while. Has she had anything to eat or drink? Rosaleen you see to that.”
Eddie spent the rest of the evening in charge, then spent the night on the sofa in the living room. It had helped to take away some of the ache of loss that he was feeling for his father.
The family stood in the churchyard a few days later, surrounding the hole where the coffin had been lowered. Eddie held up his grieving mother and the girls wept into their handkerchiefs. Terry nudged Mickey with his elbow.
“Do you see who’s over there by the willow tree, Mickey?”
His brother took a quick peek over his shoulder.”
“Yes, it’s Alice, my old nanny. Wonder why she’s bothered coming? I thought she’d had a falling out with my mother and that’s why she left.”
“Well she must be still nannying ’cos she’s got a lad with her. Though he looks a bit too old, you’d think he’d be at school.”
Gladys followed her sons’ eyes to the woman who stood near the lych gate. So she’d turned up had she and brought her bastard son with her? Not entirely unexpected, though Gladys had been too upset to let it worry her. She remembered back to the day when the little tart had told her that she was expecting J.C.’s child. Alice had stood in front of her defiantly, saying that J.C. was going to marry her and they were going to move away. But Gladys knew he wouldn’t, not when she, Gladys, had borne him four sons and three daughters, plus he was a Roman Catholic and wouldn’t want to burn in Hell. To give J.C. his due, he had supported the child through his solicitor, though what was going to happen now that there was no money in the bank?
Gladys turned back to the proceedings with a sigh, which was taken by the family as a sign of anguish. Little did they know that she was thinking of J.C.’s sins that were now catching him up!
Later, as the family gathered to hear the reading of the Will by the local solicitor, no one was surprised to hear that there was no money left to be shared out. Though they were surprised to hear that a bequest would have been left to Alice Meadows and her young son.
Irene was getting worried. There’d been no word from Eddie since he had gone back to be with his family. She had left her employment now and had time to think. What was she going to do if he didn’t come back to marry her? Lily said she was sure he’d be back, turn up like a bad penny and make an honest woman of her. Though he’d probably leave it to the last minute, a man would do that sort of thing. So Irene waited, but it wasn’t until the middle of July that he turned up full of apologies. He had looked for work nearer his mother’s house because he couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her on her own.
“But what about your brothers, they’re still at home aren’t they and Caitlin only lives down the lane?”
Irene felt furious that Eddie had put his mother first and hadn’t even told the foreman at the flour mill that he was leaving his employ.
“It’s me my mother needs, Irene, she relies on me more than the others. Now are you going to place the banns at the Registry Office, or shall I do it on my way back home?”
Three weeks later Eddie and Irene were married at the Registry Office in Hamilton Square. The witnesses were Sheena and her fiancé Harry, no one else from his family bothered to come. Isabel came from Southport with her baby and Lily put her best hat on to attend, then after the ceremony they celebrated with fish and chips at the Blackpool Supper Bar in Conway Street.
Though when Eddie came to live at Pear Tree Cottage permanently, things began to change between Lily and himself. She began to treat him in a most unfriendly fashion, seemingly resenting that he’d taken her husband’s place. Things were made worse because Lily had taken on a new lodger, a cantankerous old fellow for whom nothing was ever right. The couple desperately needed a place of their own, but Irene knew that her mother wouldn’t be able to cope. The trio lurched from row to row, with Irene in the middle with divided loyalties. Eddie threatened to leave the lot of them, but he knew he couldn’t with a baby on the way.
He had gone back to bricklaying, though his days were long as he could only find a job across the Mersey in Liverpool. He was working on an extension to a telephone exchange in Edge Hill and it was rumoured that the Postmaster General, Sir Kingsley Wood, was coming to lay the foundation stone. Eddie was very curious, as he had never seen that kind of ceremony before.
The men on construction were told to carry on working as the shiny black Daimler swept along the driveway carrying its distinguished passenger. Eddie, though, was determined that he was going to join the privileged few. He had heard that coins and some records would be laid under the stone for posterity. Unfortunately, a reporter and photographer were there from the Liverpool Echo, who snapped a picture of a brickie with his arms around two switchboard girls. Eddie was given his cards the very next day and he didn’t get to keep the photo as a souvenir!
Irene was depressed when he told her what had happened; the baby was due in a couple of weeks and she worried a lot over money. It wasn’t easy to get a job anymore, unemployment was high as the country hadn’t recovered from the slump of the years before. She was annoyed with Eddie that he had disregarded the foreman’s instruction.
Eddie landed on his feet, however, when, as he was travelling on the ferry boat the next day to start to look for work again, he spoke with an elderly man with whom he had become friendly on previous journeys. Not knowing what the man did for a living, he happened to mention that he had become unemployed and told him of the Kingsley Wood fiasco. As luck would have it the man was helping to build a new façade on the front of the Littlewood building near the telephone exchange. The job was only for a week or two, but it tided Eddie over until the baby came.
The baby showed signs that it was on its way on a rainy Saturday morning in January. The greengrocer van had just been to deliver a sack of potatoes, as the yield hadn’t been very good in the Pear Tree Cottage garden. The bread boy had called to deliver their order, with Lily in two minds whether to get some cakes for Sunday tea, for she was certain the boy was licking the cream off before he handed them over. Irene had cleaned the house from top to bottom over the past few days and was busy emptying a bucket of water into the outside drain, when another stream of water made its presence felt as she stood there.
She called Lily to come quick in her panic, not knowing anything about signs to watch for or twinges that might occur. Lily stood rooted to the spot, while Eddie raced round, grabbing Irene’s coat to sling round her shoulders, picking up her previously packed suitcase, then pushing her gently down the front path to the gate. He hailed the first vehicle that came along the dock road. Luckily for Irene it was a chauffeur-driven Bentley, had it been a coal cart she still would have been slung onto it. She was taken to the nursing home where she was booked to have her baby and her little daughter, Gina, made her appearance the next day.
But back home, when Irene should have been resting after giving birth to her baby, she found she was in the middle of a war zone between Eddie and his mother-in-law. They were quarrelling or not speaking alternately over petty things, like who was responsible for the garden, who should order the coal, who should do the heavy shopping, whether a crying child should be picked up or left to cry alone.
Ir
ene felt that her wonderful dream of marital happiness was being shattered and wondered where it would all end.
One Sunday morning, Eddie decided to cheer Irene up and take her and his new daughter to be shown off to the family. The moment had come which Irene had been dreading. She tried to think of a reason why she couldn’t go and let Eddie go on his own. She couldn’t think of one, so that afternoon she found herself in the front room of Gladys’ semi, being stared at rudely by the Dockerty family as a whole.
While Eddie’s sisters clucked and cooed over Gina, Irene sat on the sofa, ignored by Gladys and snubbed by his brothers. It was an uncomfortable feeling and one she didn’t wish to repeat again. Caitlin, though, was kind, presenting Irene with a baby coat and beret for Gina, which made her feel awkward, because she hadn’t thought to buy anything for Caitlin’s child.
The conversation between the brothers was either football or the German chancellor, Adolph Hitler. Neither things were of interest to Irene, but she listened politely anyway. It seemed that this man in Germany was a warmonger, who was threatening to roll his tanks into Poland and Czechoslovakia as an act of oppression. Britain’s prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, had already come back from a meeting with the German chancellor saying he’d signed a peace treaty, but the brothers reckoned that Chamberlain was an idiot and the Second World War could start any day.
“I’ll be the first one to enlist,” said Terry. “Anything’s better than working in that margarine factory. We’d whip Hitler back into his place within a month or two, they say that the British Army is the best in the world.”
“Do you think they’d take me, Terry?” asked Mickey. “I know I’m only sixteen, but I look older than my age. I hate it where I’m working too. Being on that conveyor belt at Cadbury’s is so boring. We could sign up together and be in the same regiment.”
“So I’ll miss it then,” said Sam, the youngest, glumly. “But never mind, I’ll get to see the Tranmere home matches while you’re both away.”
The Littlewoods job came to an end and Eddie spent his days traipsing around the building sites of Liverpool. It wasn’t long before he found employment on a housing estate that was being built in the Old Roan area, so once again there was money coming into the Pear Tree Cottage household. The weather began to pick up again as an early Spring gladdened hearts and Lily began to spend her time sowing seeds and digging in the potato tubers. Irene spent her time keeping the house clean and walking Gina out in an old pram that somebody had given her. It was a time of peace and although there was widespread unemployment and threatened strikes by those in work, nobody believed that a second war was in the offing. To most people, Germany was a place over the water in a place called Europe and really had nothing to do with Britain at all.
Shattered Dreams Page 7