When Day is Done

by When Day is Done (retail) (epub

  The uncle owned some property near the shop and offered a house rent-free to Davy if he married. Josie was ecstatic and they immediately made plans for their wedding. Within a month they had become man and wife and moved into the house, a two-up, two-down in a street off Everton Road. Davy’s mother refused to attend the wedding or to recognise Josie as her daughter-in-law.

  In spite of that, it was a happy occasion. Josie wore a cream coat and skirt with a large cream hat trimmed with brown pansies and cherries, and Kate, as her bridesmaid, wore her blue suit. Davy’s uncle gave the bride away, and it was a happy group who returned to the guesthouse kitchen for the wedding breakfast, provided by Kate. She had decorated the table with flowers and trails of smilax, and Davy’s uncle said he had never seen such a spread of food. ‘Your ma doesn’t know what she’s missing,’ he joked to Davy.

  Kate gave the couple a matching tea and dinner service as a wedding present, Mrs Molesworth a set of pans, Lottie a statuette under a glass dome, and the best man, a fellow cobbler, a rose-sprigged bowl and ewer and a matching chamber pot. But the most surprising present was from Mildred. She called Josie into her room and presented her with £20. ‘You’ve been a good reliable worker,’ she said, ‘but this is because we’re your family, as it were. I wish you and your husband a happy married life.’

  ‘I was that thunderstruck I never thanked her properly,’ Josie said. ‘I never expected nothing like that and saying that about me being family, like.’ She wept a little and Mrs Molesworth said encouragingly, ‘Well, let’s hope you soon have your own family round you. A little girl that can play with the doll your mam sent you.’ Kate smiled at Josie, thinking that Mrs Molesworth always rose to the occasion and said the right thing.

  It had been arranged that Josie would work in the guesthouse each day and leave in time to cook Davy’s evening meal. The two bank clerks had at last received their papers and departed for training camp, but before Mildred could replace them she suffered a slight stroke. She had been to town and returned in a cab from which she had to be helped and put to bed. She was as secretive as ever and said nothing about where she had been or a possible reason for the stroke, and Kate was afraid to ask her outright.

  Within a few days she was up and about, walking with a slight limp, but otherwise everything was unchanged. She still refused to allow Kate to know anything about the financial affairs of the guesthouse, but she became increasingly cantankerous and grumbled constantly about money.

  Lottie complained that she could do nothing right for Mildred. ‘The missus is after me the whole time,’ she complained to Kate. ‘Whatever I do she finds fault with it, and she’s always there every time I turn round. If you wasn’t so good to me I’d walk out.’

  ‘Don’t leave me, Lottie,’ Kate said. ‘I couldn’t do without you. I’ll speak to her.’ More and more work was now falling to Lottie and to Kate herself, as Mrs Molesworth’s ulcerated leg was worse, and Josie, who was now expecting her first child, could do much less than before. Her morning sickness persisted throughout the day, and she lost weight and all her bright colour, although she was still very happy.

  ‘There’s something wrong,’ Mrs Molesworth told Kate. ‘Some mornings she looks like a tallow candle. I hope that wicked old mother hasn’t put a curse on her.’

  Kate and Lottie did all they could to save Josie from stretching or doing heavy work, and Kate felt that without Lottie she could not have managed. She spoke to Mildred and asked her to stop harassing the girl. ‘Get rid of the other two then,’ Mildred snapped. ‘Plenty of women who’d be glad of the jobs.’

  ‘All right, but it’ll cost you twice as much,’ Kate said, determined to call her bluff. ‘Anyway, the cleaning is my responsibility. You seem to want to take it over. Do you want me to do the money side instead?’

  ‘Don’t get above yourself, miss,’ Mildred snarled. ‘You haven’t got your hands on this place yet, and maybe you never will.’ Before Kate could reply she suddenly began to talk pathetically about the stroke and how she was only trying to help Kate, and Kate felt unable to say any more.

  Davy’s mother still refused to acknowledge Josie as his wife, and when the time came for the birth Mrs Molesworth and Kate went to help Josie. The baby was a boy, well formed but small and a strange colour, and he died within a minute of his birth.

  ‘He only breathed and died, love,’ Mrs Molesworth told Josie gently. ‘Never mind. You’re young yet – plenty of time before you for more,’ but Josie wept bitterly.

  ‘She’ll say it’s my fault,’ she sobbed. ‘She met Davy and told him I’d kill the baby going out to work.’

  ‘Take no notice, girl,’ said Mrs Molesworth. ‘Tell Davy to tell her you work because she leeches on to Davy for most of his wages. Tell her to go out to work herself instead.’

  Josie threw her arms round Mrs Molesworth. ‘Oh Mrs M.,’ she said, ‘you’ve been like a mother to me.’ She turned to Kate. ‘And you’ve been my sister and my best friend, Kate. I love both of you so much.’ Kate hugged her but Mrs Molesworth seemed embarrassed. ‘Don’t get worked up, queen,’ she said. ‘Lay down. We’ll tidy you, then I’ll make you a drop of gruel and Davy can come and see you. He’s walking up and down outside.’

  ‘Does he know about the baby?’ asked Josie, and Mrs Molesworth said, ‘Yes, girl, but it’s only you he’s worried about.’

  Within a few months Josie was pregnant again, and this time Davy insisted that she gave up work in the guesthouse. Josie was reluctant because Davy himself was often ill and off work, but he told her that he would give his mother less of his wages.

  ‘I’ve been too soft with her,’ he said. ‘Plenty of women of her age have got jobs now, but she’d rather drain off me so there’s less for us – for you, really. I’m not having you killing yourself for her.’

  ‘It’s taken him a long time to see it, but he’s really turned against her now,’ Josie said. ‘Though really I’d rather be working than sitting at home worrying about Davy.’

  ‘Then just come round here as a visitor,’ Kate said. ‘I’d be glad of your company.’ Kate needed someone to confide in, as she had many worries of her own at this time.

  Mildred had found guests for the two vacant rooms, but the new women, although appearing to have plenty of money, were very different from previous guests. They were noisy and arrogant, leaving their rooms in a filthy state and complaining about the food, which Kate had often queued for hours to obtain.

  Jack Rothwell had already enlisted in a Pals battalion, and after the Somme offensive in July 1916 Mr Fallon told Kate that he intended to join up as well. ‘Two of my finest pupils have been killed,’ he said. ‘Both eighteen years old. I can’t stand aside any longer.’

  ‘But at your age you don’t have to go, do you, Mr Fallon?’ said Kate.

  He shook his head. ‘I must, Kate,’ he said sadly.

  ‘Oh, this awful war!’ Kate exclaimed. ‘If only that Archduke and his wife hadn’t been killed.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have made any difference,’ said Mr Fallon cynically. ‘They’d have found some other pretext. Wars are all about money, Kate, and stockpiles of armaments that have to be used and replaced, and old grudges and ambitions.’

  Kate was uncertain how to reply, but she said quietly, ‘All the more reason for you not to go, it seems to me.’

  ‘I must, Kate,’ he said again. ‘I can’t stand aside while boys I taught are killed. By conviction I’m a conscientious objector, but I haven’t the courage to register as one. Far easier to go with the tide.’

  A few weeks later he was gone, but Mildred was unable to let his room, or Jack Rothwell’s.

  As sorry as Kate was to see Mr Fallon go, a far worse blow had been when she learned that Henry was now in the King’s Liverpool Regiment. Hetty had called to see Josie and told her that Mr Barnes’s brother had been killed at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle and his mother had joined the household in Rufford Road. ‘Now I’ve got three women telling me what to do,’ she
said. ‘And I’ve had enough.’

  She decided to leave and go into munitions, and Kate’s source of information was lost. It was a casual remark by Jack Rothwell shortly before he left that gave her the news about Henry. After that she studied the casualty lists which appeared in the Echo every night, but so far Henry’s name had not appeared.

  In early May the ship on which Billy Molesworth was serving was torpedoed and sunk with great loss of life. Many Liverpool men were among the crew, and Kate went with Mrs Molesworth to the Cunard offices in Bold Street, hoping against hope that Billy was among those saved, but it was not to be. Kate clutched Mrs Molesworth’s work-roughened hand in wordless sympathy, knowing that nothing she could say would relieve her old friend’s black despair.

  Sometimes Kate herself felt almost despairing, although she told herself that she should be ashamed when she compared her troubles with those of Mrs Molesworth. Mildred spent most of the day in her room, refusing to listen when Kate tried to talk about the many problems she had, and she flatly refused to acknowledge that Mrs Bradley was becoming increasingly odd and a cause of worry to Kate.

  Mrs Molesworth had not returned to work after Billy’s death, and when Kate went to see her she found her in bed, being looked after by a neighbour and seeming too tired to talk.

  ‘The rest will do her leg good anyway,’ Kate said hopefully to the neighbour, but the woman shook her head.

  ‘No, it’s not her leg that’s the trouble. She’s just lost heart. What with Charlie going, and now Billy, she hasn’t got nothing to live for, like. She doesn’t want to go on.’

  ‘She’s so brave, I’m sure she’ll soon start fighting back,’ Kate insisted, but the woman only sighed.

  ‘She’ll never get outa that bed, girl, and maybe better for her if she don’t,’ she said.

  Kate went back with Josie a few days later, but they were too late. Mrs Molesworth was dead. ‘Slipped away in the night,’ the neighbour said. ‘At least she went peaceful.’

  Kate and Josie were devastated. They clung together weeping, and Josie sobbed, ‘She was like me mam to me. I could tell her anything.’

  ‘She was to me too,’ said Kate. ‘Always helped me and gave me good advice, and she was always the same. No moods like Aunt Mildred.’ Later, after the simple funeral, Kate said sadly, ‘What a life she had, Josie. Nothing but sorrow and suffering. Losing her children, then Mr Molesworth’s accident and that awful ulcer. She was in agony with it from the first day I met her. She didn’t deserve to suffer so much. She was such a good woman and she did so much for everyone, as well as looking after her husband all those years.’

  ‘But she didn’t see it like that,’ Josie said. ‘She often said how lucky she was, with a good husband and a good son. She was never miserable, was she? We always had a good laugh with her.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Kate admitted. ‘And she was always interested in everyone and she had them weighed up too. I’ll miss her salty comments.’

  ‘Yes, and she got a laugh out of them too,’ said Josie. ‘She told me her fellow said she should be on the halls when she was taking off the missus and some of the guests. She enjoyed life, Kate.’

  ‘Yes. It just got too much for her at the end,’ said Kate. ‘We shouldn’t grieve for her, Josie.’

  ‘It’s ourselves we’re sorry for,’ Josie said, ‘‘cos we know how much we’ll miss her,’ and Kate knew that she was right.

  Chapter Eleven

  Rose was pleased when war was declared, as she saw it as a means to an exciting new life. ‘Now I can do something different,’ she told Kate. ‘My life is so dull, just waiting on Aunt Beattie and her whims, but now I can do as I like. It won’t be patriotic for her to interfere.’

  Kate was surprised that Rose thought her life dull. On previous visits Rose had told her of shopping sprees with friends, and of tennis teas and garden parties she had attended, but she only said, ‘What will you do, Rose?’

  ‘I haven’t decided,’ Rose said airily. ‘Probably I’ll become a VAD. Think of all those handsome officers I’d be nursing!’ She giggled, and Kate thought sadly, How she’s changed. A few years ago she’d have really wanted to do something useful. Remembering Rose as she was, she felt more cheerful. It’s this crowd she’s been in with, Kate decided. She’ll go back to her old self when she gets away from them.

  Although Rose spoke so flippantly to Kate, she really did intend to volunteer to nurse the troops. Many girls from middle-class families were joining the Voluntary Aid Detachment. They were trained by regular staff in hospitals and later, in France, did useful work, nursing wounded men and driving ambulances in the mud and carnage of the Western Front.

  Like many other girls, Rose had a romantic vision of gliding around the wards, dressed in a becoming uniform and laying cool hands on the fevered brows of handsome young officers, who would promptly fall in love with her.

  A conversation at one of Beattie’s bridge afternoons swiftly brought Rose down to earth. Mrs Gilroy, a tall, commanding woman, talked of her own niece who had enrolled as a VAD. ‘I said it was foolish and I’ve been proved right,’ she declared. ‘The gel is absolutely exhausted, and her hands! Red and swollen like a charwoman’s, and no wonder. She says she spends most of her time in what they call the sluice, scrubbing rubber sheets and emptying and washing bedpans. The sister hates the VADs and gives them the most menial and unpleasant tasks, and the regular staff are hateful to them. Jealousy, I suppose, because our gels are of a superior class.’

  Other ladies joined in with tales of young relatives or friends enduring long hours of unpleasant work and being treated with contempt because they fainted at the sight of blood.

  Rose listened, her desire to serve rapidly evaporating. She looked at her soft white hands with their carefully buffed nails, and pictured them red and swollen with hot soda water. And bedpans! She had not thought of bedpans. I could soon deal with hostile nurses or sisters, she thought, but is this what I really want to do?

  She knew that she should not be influenced by selfish elderly women, but biased and garbled though the accounts were, a picture had emerged of a hard life needing self-sacrifice and endurance. Rose decided that she must learn more about the life of a VAD before making a decision.

  Many of the young men who had squired Rose to various events were now serving in the Army or the Navy, and one had become an airman. One of them, Peter Bennet, came home on embarkation leave before his battalion moved to France, and Rose accompanied him to a show. Afterwards they went to a supper club and Rose told him that she was considering volunteering as a VAD.

  ‘You’re not the type, Rose,’ he said decisively. ‘I haven’t had first-hand experience yet, but I know chaps who’ve been in the trenches. They’re grateful to the girls who are nursing out there and they respect and admire them, but one chap said he’d hate his sister to be there, and I think that’s the general opinion. There are sights there that aren’t fit for girls who’ve led a sheltered life.’

  ‘But I must do something, Peter,’ Rose protested.

  He smiled and took her hand. ‘There are plenty of strong-minded women for that, Rose. You just stay the sweet butterfly you are – roll bandages or raise money for comforts for the men, by all means, but let me think of you just as you are, here waiting for me.’

  Rose was alarmed. She liked Peter, but she hoped that the war would enlarge her circle of eligible young men and she was determined not to commit herself so soon. She gently withdrew her hand. ‘I must think about it, Peter,’ she said. ‘I love my country and I want to do all I can to help her in her hour of need.’

  Peter smiled indulgently and patted her hand, not realising that he was being gently fobbed off. Rose said no more about her plans and spent the rest of the evening charming Peter, giving him happy memories to take with him to France. She was pleased that society’s rigid rules of behaviour had already been relaxed. Before the war she would not have been allowed such an evening alone with Peter, so she felt tha
t already her horizons were widening. It was not the time for hasty decisions.

  Kate was so fully occupied that there was no question of war work for her. As soon as Miss Lennon heard about the Zeppelin raids, she discovered a cousin living in the Cheshire countryside, and announcing that her nerves would not allow her to stay in Liverpool, she departed to stay with her.

  Kate was not sorry to see her go, but her departure seemed to make Mrs Bradley’s grasp on reality even more tenuous. She was becoming increasingly confused, forgetting mealtimes and having to be brought from her room by Kate or Lottie and encouraged to eat. Otherwise she sat staring blankly at the food on her plate, or looking at Miss Andrews and Mrs Burroughs, the new guests, and saying loudly, ‘Who are these people? What are they doing in my house?’

  The two women resented this, muttering to each other, ‘Crazy old bat. Should be locked up,’ and declaring that she was spoiling their meal. Kate decided that the only solution was to serve Mrs Bradley’s meals in her room, although they were already fully stretched and there was no guarantee that Mrs Bradley would not appear at the dining table.

  Mildred refused to help or even to admit that there was anything wrong. ‘Mrs Bradley is a lady and very quiet,’ she said. ‘She’s always been my favourite guest.’

  ‘But her mind is failing,’ Kate protested. ‘We need help with her. Her relations should be told too. Have you got an address for them?’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Mildred said, ignoring Kate’s question. ‘She just gets a little bothered at times.’

  ‘A little bothered!’ Kate echoed. ‘Aunt Mildred, she was on the front steps in her nightdress yesterday – I told you about it – and she sees me every day yet doesn’t remember who I am. She’s ordered me out of the house several times.’