Her Heart's Desire

by Vivienne Dockerty

  “That was then and this is now,” she said briskly, trying to imagine the once handsome man, whom she had long ago thought she was in love with, comparing him, now bloated and fat, with her own still slim husband. “And if I had to live my life all over, it would be Charlie who I would choose as my heart’s desire.”

  What else could I say, she thought later, as she sat on the side of Charlie’s bed. No point in mourning all those years, when they were gone forever. He had made his choice to marry her sister and she’d only been trying to get back at him.

  “I’d bury you under the pear tree,” Lily said lightly, after telling her husband who had been at the funeral and their reactions to it, not liking to tell him that she had been paying the Co-operative an amount each week for his own death policy. “Anyway, Charlie, you’ll live to be a hundred. This happens every winter, you taking a chill and being confined to bed.”

  “I don’t want to live until I’m one hundred,” he answered miserably. “What’s the point of living now that I can’t even see to read a newspaper? I may as well be dead.”

  “Shush now, Charlie, don’t speak like that. How would Irene and little Sadie feel if they heard you talking like that?”

  “But not you eh, Lily? You’d be off like a rocket with your winnings, buying a new house for yourself and probably finding another man to replace me. I know you’ve got some of that money stashed away; I’ve still got feeling in my fingers and if you want to hide your money you need a better place than the old sea chest. I wouldn’t blame you neither, who’d want to live in this hovel of a house?”

  “We do, Charlie, it’s our home and the land around it has given us a living all these years. I’ll tell you what, you get better and we’ll go to Morecambe for a week next summer. We’ll take Irene and ask if Sadie can come with us, too. You’d like that, you can paddle again in the sea and get a bit of the sun on your face.”

  “Perhaps, we’ll see what happens. I’m tired now, Lily, I want to go to sleep.”

  At the beginning of 1928, to add to Lily’s worries that hadn’t receded over the years, Isabel arrived on the doorstep accompanied by Sadie, baby Stephen and a suitcase containing the family’s clothes. According to her daughter, Duggie, finding that married life and two small children were clipping his wings somewhat and he couldn’t even spare a few coppers to have a pint each night at The Claughton, had found himself a fancy piece and gone back to live with his Mum. Isabel had nowhere else to go, not being able to afford to pay the rent or stay with Aunt Eliza, who had moved back into the upstairs flat herself and there was no room for the children.

  Of course, Lily was not one to shirk her duty took the family in, on the proviso that Isabel did her share of the housework and didn’t expect her to babysit. Irene was delighted and took to her role as live-in aunty, playing little games with the children and taking them for evening strolls. Charlie loved to sit and listen to their high-spirited chattering.

  Irene by now was working as a junior at Saltbury’s department store in Grange Road. She disliked it intensely, seeing as she was the ‘go for’ and was paid a paltry sum for her efforts. All her dreams of going to teaching college or being able to speak a foreign language fluently had disappeared, after Charlie had no longer been able to pay for a private school. She felt bitter when she remembered her formative years at the convent, where she was taught to speak a little French by the kindly nuns.

  Now she was marking time until she met and married a decent man, not one like Duggie, according to Lily, and certainly not her distant cousin Evan, who after asking Irene to go to the Argylle Theatre had, when Lily refused to give her permission, taken a girl from Victoria Road instead. She had ignored him then if she saw him walking to his gateway and felt relieved when her mother told her that the family were moving to a house in Crosby.

  Irene had grown into a pleasant young lady with a gentle nature, who cared very much for her father but only felt a certain duty-bound respect for her mother. She found Lily hard to get along with, given that her mother could be snappy, intolerant and expected everyone to jump to her tune. There were quite a few ding dongs between Lily and Isabel, as obviously two women never really get on whilst sharing a kitchen, so Irene could often be found reading in the orchard or taking the children on long walks along the esplanade at Leasowe. Of boyfriends there were none, although plenty of young men from the warehouse at Saltbury’s had often asked her out on a date.

  One day, Irene came in from work feeling tired and a bit frazzled, as the floor walker at the department store had laboured the point of a bit of dust that had settled on top of her display counter, which was unbeknown to her. She was asked by her father if she could spare a few minutes to talk to him. Feeling intrigued, she sat at his side on the sofa, while sounds of the children whooping around the garden and Lily shouting after them, came to her ears.

  It appeared that one of her great aunts on the Patterson side, who lived in a small village called Irby, had recently lost her husband and, feeling lonely, had written to Lily and asked if Irene would like to stay for a while? It seemed that Great Aunt Miriam was living in a brand new bungalow on the outskirts of the village and with it being a new development, there were no streetlights as yet and it faced a vast tract of farmland that stretched down to the sea. Now that she was a widow, Miriam was feeling a little vulnerable.

  What Charlie didn’t say was that Isabel, on the pretext of having a weekly visit to a friend, had met up with a man called Robert and was hoping to get a divorce. Lily thought it best that Irene, being a young and innocent girl, wasn’t there to get caught up in the unpleasantness. It suited Irene. Although she had only seen her great aunt once or twice at family gatherings, she had seemed a pleasant old soul.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  With Irene settled at her great aunt’s and catching the bus to work each day from Irby to Birkenhead, Lily and Charlie turned their attention to the problem in hand. Suffice to say, Robert was a better catch than Duggie, according to Lily’s way of thinking. Although working in a bar as a tenant manager for a local brewery, he had served his time as an officer in the last world war. He was older than Isabel, more mature and had taken to being Sadie and Stephen’s ‘uncle’ very well.

  Lily had been furious when Isabel let it slip that she had met Robert in a less than salubrious public house over the bridge in Conway Street, but with Charlie’s warning ringing in her ears that she would lose her daughter and grandchildren if she started her usual creating, Robert was invited around for Sunday tea and given the once over. The fact that his father had lost his fortune in a dodgy financial transaction abroad and that Robert had a medal for valour in the line of duty with a limp to prove it caused Lily to agree that perhaps Isabel had made the right choice in her beau this time. She agreed to take her share in the care of the children whilst Isabel did a spot of courting and waited for her divorce from Duggie to come through. It was a drain on Lily’s purse again, not helped by Duggie, who was mean with the money that he sometimes bestowed on his wife. Isabel, a dab hand at alterations, trained as she had been by her Aunt Eliza, put a sign in the cottage window to help out with the finances.

  One Saturday afternoon, about two years after Irene had moved in with Great Aunt Miriam, Lily called into the department store where Irene worked to tell her that Isabel and Robert, now newly married courtesy of Duggie furnishing details of his adultery, had found a place to rent in Southport and to ask if she would like to come home again. Of course, Lily didn’t say that Irene’s wage would come in handy once the happy couple had gone.

  Irene had her own news to impart to her mother. It appeared that she had been seeing a well-to-do young man who was the elder son of the owner of a large building company and he had recently asked her to marry him. Lily insisted that Irene brought her fiancé to meet the family just as soon as she could.

  Isabel answered the door to the couple next day, looking as if she was expecting her new baby at any moment. Her divorce from Duggie
had come through opportunely, enabling her to marry Robert in the registry office a few weeks before. There were no new pretty dresses this time and no money for a wedding breakfast in a local café. Isabel had worn a big coat to cover her bump on the day.

  “Irene!” Isabel was all smiles as she looked beyond her sister and saw a handsome, dark haired man, slender and of medium height, dressed in a grey two-piece, double breasted suit and wearing black shiny shoes, standing behind her.

  “Is this your fiancé? We wondered when we were going to meet him, after Mother spoke to you yesterday. You are naughty keeping us in the dark about him.”

  “Eddie, this is my sister Isabel. I only told Mother yesterday that I was engaged and she said I was to bring you over. I bet she didn’t think I’d bring you over so soon.”

  “Who is it, Isabel?” asked a feeble voice from within, while the sound of noisy children greeted their ears from one of the bedrooms above.

  “It’s Irene, Dad. She’s brought her fiancé over to meet us. I’ll just go and put the kettle on the hob and make us all a cup of tea.”

  “Hello Papa,” said Irene, walking into the rather sparsely furnished room, where her father, dressed in faded brown, corduroy trousers; an old, white, collarless shirt and a thin, plucked, fawn cardigan, lay on a sagging, blue, moquette covered sofa. “I’ve brought Eddie, my intended, to meet you. This is Eddie; Eddie, meet my father, Charles Wilson.”

  Eddie nodded politely and put out his arm to grasp the man’s bony hand in his, whilst feeling sorry for the poor old bugger.

  “Is Mother about, or is she in the garden? That’s where I would expect her to be.”

  “She’s out there with Isabel’s husband, bringing in the new potatoes. This is the first time they’ve had the opportunity, what with it lashing with rain yesterday.”

  “Poor Papa. Is there nothing more that they can do for your eyesight? Can it not get better? What did the doctor say?”

  “Stop your worrying Irene, what will be will be. Eddie, come over and sit by me, I’ve still a little sight left to take a good look at my future son-in-law.”

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” said Eddie, sitting down beside the man and staring into the pale, worn face. “I believe you used to be a sparky, working on the submarines?”

  “Yes, that was so, Eddie, I think that’s how I began to lose my eyesight. Being underground for long periods makes your body think you’re a mole.”

  Eddie and Irene laughed politely at his little joke, but they both felt compassion for the man.

  “So Eddie, are you an old fashioned man? Have you come to ask for permission to marry my daughter?”

  “Of course sir, that’s why I’m here today: to ask for Irene’s hand in marriage.”

  “I’m sure whoever our Irene has fallen in love with will make her happy. She’s a practical girl with a good head on her shoulders; she won’t have chosen the first man who came along. Come here both of you and let me give you my blessing.” He took both their hands in his and gave them a wry smile.

  The couple looked upon him sadly. Though Eddie had never seen the man before, he could see that he was wasting away. He’d heard from Irene that her father had never been robust since spending a long time underwater, marooned in a submarine when the propeller had got stuck in a sand bank out in Liverpool Bay. It was a wonder the man was still living, because as Eddie watched Charlie took in big gulps of air and turned his head fretfully towards the open window. Though the day was fairly mild, the room was chilly, not helped at all by the miserable fire in the grate.

  “Can I get you a blanket, Papa?” asked Irene, perturbed by the racking coughing spell that had followed and the thinning of her father’s features since she had seen him the last a few weeks before. He hadn’t been able to make Isabel’s wedding and so a buffet for friends and family had been laid on later at home.

  “If you would, Irene. I don’t seem to be able to get warm nowadays.”

  “Sit down, Irene, I’ll get him one,” said Isabel, who had just brought in a tray. “You and Eddie drink the tea that I’ve made you, there’s a blanket in the lobby I can fetch him.”

  A noise from the back kitchen made Eddie and Irene prick up their ears.

  “It’s your mother coming in with Robert,” gasped Charlie. “Don’t tell her that I’ve had a coughing fit or she’ll have me taken to hospital. I had to sleep down here last night, because I was keeping her awake with my breathing.”

  “We won’t say anything Papa,” Irene promised sadly. “But maybe you should be in hospital after all.”

  Lily came stomping through the kitchen into the parlour, wearing an old pair of men’s socks and a grubby, blue mackintosh over her navy ankle length dress. She wore a floppy, knitted hat over her tangled, grey hair and looked askance when she saw that she had visitors.

  “Irene,” she said in annoyance. “Why didn’t you tell me you were coming today? I only saw you yesterday, you could have told me then.”

  “We only just made our minds up to come over today, Mother. This is Eddie, Eddie Dockerty, my intended.”

  “Caught me on the hop, haven’t you? It would have been far better if you had given me warning and then I could have got something in.”

  “We’ve got a seed cake that I baked yesterday, Mother, and a batch of scones I made this morning.”

  “Yes, Isabel, I know that,” Lily snapped. “But I am sure Irene’s fiancé is used to something a little grander, with him coming from a better class of family. I know of the Dockerty’s; I once attended a fundraising event of theirs, in another life.”

  “Mother!” said Irene, feeling uncomfortable with her mother’s attitude towards Eddie, though understanding why, as Lily herself had been born into a well to do family.

  “I’m sure I didn’t come here to be fed on the fat of the land, Mrs Wilson,” said Eddie, smiling congenially and ignoring her brusque tone. “I came to meet my future family and I love to eat seed cake, it’s one of my favourites.”

  “Hmm,” said Lily, though she was beginning to feel mollified, seeing as he was a handsome chap without any airs and graces. His presence was taking her back to her own youth when she had set her heart on Cousin Lawrence. “I’ll go and get Robert, he’s in the garden. I want to get the potatoes in while there’s still a bit of sun around.”

  “I’m here, Lily,” shouted Robert from the kitchen. “I’m just taking my boots off, then I’ll bring us in a couple of teas.”

  “No time for that, Robert. Get in here and meet Irene’s fiancé, then we’ll get back to it.”

  Robert came into the room. A big, strong man, whilst Isabel was little and normally dainty. He had to duck under the lintel before he greeted Eddie with a ready smile. “Slave driver, your mother,” he said to Irene. “Has me working from dawn to sunset, all day and every day.”

  “Rubbish,” Lily snorted. “I was up at six this morning, manning the stall while you were turning over in your nice comfy bed.”

  “Can I see your ring, Irene?” Isabel asked excitedly, looking forward to seeing at least a diamond on Irene’s ring finger. She knew that she’d be bound to feel jealous, not having an engagement ring of her own. Her sister was wearing white frilly gloves with her floral organza summer dress and so she couldn’t see it.

  “Ah, no ring I’m afraid,” said Eddie, blushing slightly. “A bit of a hitch, I’m sure Irene will tell you about it.”

  “Mother, before you go back to the garden, could I ask you and Papa something?”

  “Yes?” Lily asked, one eyebrow raised in question. “What is it? You’re not in the family way, are you?”

  “Lily,” tutted Charlie reproachfully, “there’s no need to take that tone, she’s always been a good daughter.”

  “I’m only asking because she wouldn’t be the first daughter who hadn’t told me she was expecting.” She looked meaningfully at Isabel, who was expecting her third child, conceived out of wedlock again.

  “I wanted to ask if Eddie
could move in here with you? He’s had a falling out with his father and wants to find some work locally. It will only be temporary, until his father apologises for breaking a promise to him. I thought he could have my old room, especially with Isabel and her family moving.”

  “Mmm, what kind of work would he be doing locally? There’s only the docks and he doesn’t look the type to be a stevedore.” Lily pretended to consider the situation, but another wage coming in and another pair of hands in the garden would be just the ticket.

  “I’m a skilled tradesman, Mrs Wilson. It won’t be too difficult to find a job.” If the old mother said no, Eddie supposed he could always go to Caitlin, his married sister. That would put the cat amongst the pigeons, as she lived in the bungalow down the lane from the family home.

  “So can Eddie stay then?”

  “As long as you continue to stay at Aunt Miriam’s. I don’t want people pointing fingers at us and saying we’re running a bawdy house. Now then Robert, I think we’ve just time for you to work on another couple of trenches and Isabel, tell those children of yours to stop their racket upstairs.”

  “Oh, thank you Mother!” Irene sounded relieved. She didn’t hug her stony-faced parent, as Lily had never welcomed physical contact from her daughters and probably never would.

  Eddie seemed a pleasant enough young man, Lily mused a few days later, after her new lodger had helped her by chopping down one of the plum trees that had caught the blight. The wood would come in handy to help keep the fires going in the winter and she planned to ask him if he could repair one of the panes in the greenhouse, now that the crop of tomatoes had finished and she had picked the grapes on the vines.