by Rosie Harris
It was too late to have regrets, she told herself. She went back into the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea but, although she found the electric kettle and switched it on, she couldn’t find a teapot or even any clean cups.
The sink was full of dirty dishes, not only breakfast dishes but what looked to be those left from meals the previous day. Holding back a shudder of distaste, Karen used the hot water from the kettle to fill a small plastic bowl and washed them all up and stacked them up to dry. Then she refilled the kettle and searched again for the teapot so that she could make the cup of tea she longed for.
As she sat sipping her tea, she mulled over the drastic step she had taken. Had her gran been right after all? she asked herself. Had she been silly and rash to give up her safe job and lovely home to move in with Jimmy?
She still had no idea what her new job as a press officer would be like or even if she would be able to do it. What if they sacked her at the end of her agreed trial period?
Pride wouldn’t let her return to Premium Printing, even if they would have her back. Still, as a trained secretary she could always find work somewhere else in Liverpool, she told herself.
She had almost finished drinking her tea when she heard a key turning in the lock and Jimmy came in. Her heart fluttered as she looked up at him. He was so tall and handsome, so smart in his sharp, dark grey suit, crisp white shirt and red and grey striped tie that instantly she felt all her niggling doubts vanishing.
‘You’ve already made yourself at home I see.’ He grinned as he came towards her. He bent down and kissed her on the brow. ‘I hope there’s still enough hot water in the kettle for me,’ he said as he released her, shrugged off his jacket and loosened his tie.
‘Yes, I’ll make it for you,’ she told him.
He drank it thirstily in one gulp when she brought it to him. ‘Glad you are here?’ He grinned again as he put his empty cup down.
Not waiting for her to answer he pulled her up out of the chair and drew her into his arms, kissing her passionately.
As she returned his kisses with equal fervour Karen forced all thoughts about the drawbacks she might encounter living in Dalrymple Street or when she started her new job from her mind.
She was in love with Jimmy and he was crazy about her and that was all that mattered, so of course it was going to be worth it, she told herself.
Six
Jenny Langton felt stressed. She had thought long and hard about having lodgers before eventually capitulating, and now that she had decided to take such a momentous step, she wasn’t at all sure that she was doing the right thing.
There were several reasons why it was necessary to do so. One was that she simply couldn’t manage to go on living in her beloved house on her meagre income without some form of additional help. She had practically used all the money Eddy had left her and if she had to fork out for any more essential repairs she’d have to start selling some of the furniture or some of her precious ornaments in order to meet the ever increasing bills.
Another reason was that she was desperately lonely. She was not used to living on her own with no one to talk to or look after.
Much as she loved her beautiful home, being on her own in a four-bedroom detached house could be quite frightening at times. It was bad enough in the summer months if there was a high wind blowing in off the Mersey but in winter when there were fierce gales or the occasional snow that had to be cleared away it was even worse.
She made a list of people who might be considered suitable as lodgers or as paying guests. After a great deal of deliberation she began striking out those who would not be acceptable.
She didn’t want elderly ladies or schoolteachers who might be bossy or demanding; she didn’t want very young women because she would feel too responsible for them.
She eventually decided that men would be the most suitable as lodgers; her list included bank managers, civil servants, retired army colonels, doctors and even lecturers at Liverpool University.
She hoped to find at least two, possibly three. She visualized them all sitting down with her to an evening meal that she had cooked and then relaxing over coffee in her comfortable lounge and conversing on their various topics in a friendly group like one big family.
With this in mind she wrote out a carefully worded card detailing the home comforts she was offering and added her address and telephone number. Then she set off to ask the newsagent in Wallasey Village to see if he would display it in his window.
‘Yes of course I will, Mrs Langton. How many weeks? It’s fifty pence a week payable in advance.’
‘Oh, I think two weeks will be more than adequate,’ Jenny said smiling confidently.
Feeling much more light-hearted about the matter now that she had taken some positive action, she returned home, prepared the rooms in readiness and waited expectantly.
At the end of the two weeks there had not been a single applicant. There was, however, a pile of bills on her desk that had to be paid immediately, which meant that once again she would have to make more inroads into her meagre savings.
The newsagent shrugged when she asked how it was she had not had any response to her advert. ‘Not many people in Wallasey Village looking for accommodation,’ he told her. ‘Perhaps you should try placing your advert in the Liverpool Echo. I can arrange that for you if you like, Mrs Langton.’
Three days later she had two replies. One was from a Liverpool docker who arrived unshaven and in his dirty working clothes. To Jenny’s relief he decided it was too far to travel from Wallasey to Liverpool each day. The other one was from a young man who said he was the manager at an office in the city. Jenny thought he looked far too young and brash for this to be strictly true and decided he was exaggerating. However, he was clean and friendly, well spoken and smartly dressed, so Jenny decided he was suitable and agreed to rent him a room.
Brian Coulson moved in the following weekend. Jenny gave him a bedroom that had a splendid view out over the Mersey and did everything she could to make him feel welcome. He said that he didn’t want an evening meal but he would like her to provide him with breakfast.
After just one week Jenny knew she had made a ghastly mistake and that taking in lodgers wasn’t working out, but she couldn’t afford to tell him to go.
Brian Coulson was the most untidy person she had ever known. He left his room a shambles with his dirty clothes left lying on the floor and possessions strewn everywhere. Worst of all he left the bathroom in such a dreadful state with wet towels on the floor and shaving cream and toothpaste splattered all over the mirror that she dreaded going in there afterwards.
Something else that bothered her were the odd hours Brian kept. He was never home until after midnight and he always seemed to be in high spirits, banging the doors and making a lot of noise when he came in. Long after he went to his room she could hear his radio playing. This she decided was probably why he didn’t get up in the morning until after nine o’clock and usually rushed out to catch a bus with his half-eaten piece of toast still in his hand.
The following week Jenny received a telephone call from a man called Austin Ford. He told her that he was a lecturer at the university in Liverpool and that he only wanted a Monday to Friday arrangement as he went home to his family in York every weekend. Jenny invited him to come and see the room she could offer him and discuss terms.
He was a lot older than Brian Coulson and was dressed in dark grey flannels, a dark red wool shirt and a tweed jacket with leather patches at the elbows. Jenny didn’t like him very much but she agreed to rent him a room in the hope that once there was another man living in the house Brian Coulson might mend his ways.
Austin Ford was not only middle-aged and rather set in his ways but at times he could be extremely fussy and pompous. He brought with him a bookcase, which had a shelf that opened out to form a writing desk and he made a great to-do about exactly where it should be positioned in his room. He also gave Jenny strict instructions that she was n
ever to touch it or rearrange any of the books and papers he left spread out on it.
It didn’t take Jenny very long to realize that she simply didn’t like having lodgers, but since she so desperately needed the money she forced herself to grit her teeth, smile politely and put up with their foibles.
She had told both men to ‘make themselves at home’ when they first moved in but she had no idea that they would take her quite so literally. Brian removing his tie and leaving it lying on the table or in the chair he’d been using, or draping his coat over the banister instead of hanging it up on the hallstand when he came in late at night was bad enough. When Austin Ford removed his shoes and placed his stocking feet up on the coffee table Jenny felt incensed. She sat tight-lipped wondering what she could do about it as he babbled on endlessly about the political tension that had arisen between Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher.
A further problem was that the two men had to share the same bathroom and Jenny listened to the heated arguments between them each morning with growing concern. The tension between them whenever they met was palpable and Jenny knew she ought to do something about it.
The matter resolved itself at the end of the third week when Austin Ford announced that there had been a change in his plans and that he would not be there the following week.
At the time Jenny thought he was taking a week’s holiday, but when she went upstairs to put clean sheets on his bed she found he had packed and taken all his belongings, even his books and bookcase, with him and realized he had gone for good.
That same evening Brian Coulson said that it was too difficult for him to get back from Liverpool each night because the boats stopped sailing at midnight and he would be leaving for good in the morning. It appeared that when he said he was a manager he had failed to tell her that it was of a nightclub and that this was why he was so late getting home every night.
When the front door closed behind him Jenny walked round the house, opening windows, letting in gusts of fresh air in an attempt to cleanse the place of the presence of both of the men. It was wonderful, she thought, to have her home back.
As she stripped the beds and cleaned the rooms they’d been using she felt an overwhelming sense of freedom that they had both departed. It was such a relief not to have strangers there. If only she could turn the clock right back, she thought, and have Eddy back and Karen still a little girl and everything as it had been for so many years.
She knew that was impossible and knew she had to devise some other way of finding the money to maintain her beloved home. Perhaps Karen had been right and she should try and find herself a job of some kind.
Seven
Although she tried very hard Karen Langton found it difficult to settle in to her new surroundings and to adjust to living with Jimmy Martin.
It was not only that the tiny flat in Dalrymple Street was claustrophobic after her home in Warren Point but her relationship with Jimmy was so different from what she had anticipated it would be. His whole manner had changed in every way since she had moved in and Karen found it very disturbing.
He was moody; not only first thing in the morning but often for days at a time. The hugs, kisses and sweet talk with which he had charmed her and won her heart in the first place seemed to have vanished. He was curt, often disinterested in what she had to say and sometimes so downright rude and dismissive that she felt deeply hurt.
Furthermore he was lazy and slovenly at home. He seemed to expect her to wait on him as well as to be responsible for all the cleaning and cooking. She was willing to do her fair share but the way he treated her made her feel like a drudge.
All the romance and glamour seemed to have ebbed away and the old adage ‘he only wants you for one thing’ rang in her head when he made excessive sexual demands on her.
She quite liked her new job although she found it was much harder work than she had expected. Her immediate boss, Jason White, who was in his early thirties, was rather foppish. He dressed in a very arty manner and had overlong black hair that he kept sweeping back from his brow in an affected manner that irritated her.
He was the nephew of the owner of White Hart Publicity and he was both pedantic and demanding but Karen had to admire his artistic talents and his flair for dramatic presentations.
Jason was an ideas man who left all the leg work to someone else and that, Karen discovered, was usually her. She did all the mundane hard work and Jason basked in all the glory.
More and more Karen began to wonder if she had been rather hasty in her decision to change both her job and her home at the same time. Her job was nowhere near as glamorous as she had anticipated that it would be and her new home life was certainly disappointing.
She wondered how her gran was managing without her and sometimes felt a little guilty at having left her to cope alone.
For the first time in her life she realized what budgeting entailed. Jimmy didn’t pay anything towards their food, saying that since he paid the rent for the flat and also all the lighting and heating bills then he expected her to pay for everything else they needed.
It had sounded ideal but she hadn’t realized that food cost as much as it did or that there would be all the other things she was expected to supply like toiletries for both of them and cleaning items.
She had dreamed about all the new clothes she would buy and the trips to the hairdresser and perhaps even to a beauty parlour but found she couldn’t afford to do any of these things.
True, Jimmy paid for the tickets if they went to the pictures or to a dance, but these outings didn’t happen very often. He worked such odd hours that it was impossible to fit them in. Often he didn’t come home until it was bedtime and usually there was the smell of wine or beer on his breath.
He always had a ready excuse that it was because he’d had to attend something to do with his work; reporting either a meeting or a business function of some kind. Even when she showed an interest and asked him to tell her about it he would never go into any details, which meant she could never check out in the next day’s issue of the newspaper if his story was true or not.
Once or twice when she tried to press him to tell her more he accused her of nagging and not only refused to discuss the matter but sulked for days and completely ignored her when she tried to talk to him.
Karen bore it all as stoically as she could, partly because she didn’t want to return to her gran and admit that she had made a terrible mistake. She desperately hoped that things between them would gradually get better. Jimmy was probably finding it was just as difficult having someone else in his flat as she did living there, she kept telling herself.
Yet surely he wouldn’t behave in such a boorish manner if he really and truly loved me, she asked herself time and time again when they had one of their all too frequent spats.
When she blurted this out to him after a particularly bitter row in which they’d both said things to hurt each other, he told her that she was right – he didn’t love her.
As she stared at him white-faced and aghast, he went on to tell her that he was in love with someone else and that was the reason he was so often late home in the evenings.
‘You mean you’ve been taking someone else out?’ Karen asked incredulously. ‘How could you do such a thing when you know I’m here expecting you to come home and that I will have cooked a lovely meal and have it on the table waiting for you.’
His handsome face darkened. ‘Because you bore me,’ he said callously. ‘You are so naive, so childish and such a goody-goody with your constant cooking and cleaning. I can’t stand the way you pander to me and then expect me to do exactly as you want.’
‘That’s not true,’ Karen said bristling, her green eyes swimming with tears. ‘I try my best to please you. I cook you lovely meals and keep your flat spotless. When I arrived it was dirty and the sink was full of unwashed dishes. You never see it like that now.’
‘That’s the trouble, you’re no longer any fun. You behave like an old married
woman and you look like one. You even wear the same clothes day in, day out,’ he told her contemptuously.
‘That’s because I have no money left over to buy any new ones,’ she flared. ‘I spend every penny I earn paying for food for you to eat. If I leave you’ll probably starve to death.’
Jimmy shrugged but made no reply.
The tension between them became more and more strained. That night when they went to bed Jimmy made love to her, but he was so rough, almost as if he wanted to hurt her, that she yelled out in pain and pushed him away. Instead of taking her into his arms and comforting her he turned his back on her.
Karen lay awake afterwards feeling sore and miserable, listening to Jimmy snoring. When she woke the next morning she found that the bed beside her was empty and felt cold to her touch.
Three days later when they had still not spoken another word to each other and Jimmy had stayed out all night for two nights running, Karen packed her suitcases and left.
She wondered if she should have telephoned her gran to let her know that she was coming home but she was so confident that Jenny would receive her with open arms that she didn’t think it would matter.
As Karen had anticipated, Jenny greeted her warmly with hugs and kisses, telling her how delighted she was that she was back home.
‘Let’s get these suitcases upstairs to your room and then we can have a cuppa before you start to unpack,’ Jenny said in a matter of fact voice.
She helped to carry the cases up to Karen’s room the same as she would have done if Karen had just returned from a holiday.
‘Right, I’ll go down and put the kettle on and give you a minute or two to freshen up,’ she said, turning to leave the room.
She hesitated at the door and turned to give Karen a smile. She didn’t pass any comments or ask any awkward questions but Karen knew that when she joined her downstairs Jenny would expect her to explain what had happened and why she had returned home.