A Liverpool Legacy

by Anne Baker

  Fifteen minutes later she heard Sylvie’s shout above the roar of the gale. ‘That’s Hafod.’ Her voice was full of heartfelt relief. ‘Mum, we’re home, you’ve done it.’

  Millie slowed the engine. Sylvie was leaping about and waving madly. The lights gleamed out of Hafod. Never had any sight been more welcome. In the gathering dusk she could make out two figures wearing yellow sou’westers running down to the jetty to meet them. The storm must have made Valerie and Helen anxious. Help was at hand.

  Millie took a deep breath, she felt completely drained of energy but she slowed the engine right down as she brought the yacht in closer, and cut it at just the right moment so they slid alongside the jetty.

  Chapter Three

  Millie could hear the rain splattering against the window as she woke up in the double bed. Her head was swimming and she felt drugged to the eyeballs. The first thing she always did was to reach across for Pete. To feel only cold empty space shocked her. He wasn’t there. It brought the events of the day before slamming back to her mind.

  She remembered climbing stiffly off Sea Sprite and virtually collapsing, unable to do another thing. Valerie and Helen had taken over. She knew they’d pulled Pete out of the water and sent for the local doctor. He’d prescribed sedatives for her and Sylvie, and the girls had made them take hot baths and get into bed.

  She felt across her bedside table for her watch. It told her it was half past four but she knew from the light it wasn’t morning. She pulled herself across the bed to see Pete’s alarm clock, but that agreed with her watch. She felt she’d been asleep for a long time but surely not for the best part of twenty-four hours?

  She struggled out of bed, found her dressing gown and slippers and crept downstairs. The house was quiet but she could hear a voice and it drew her to the living room. Helen was swinging gently back and forth in the old rocking chair and cooing to her baby Jenny as she gave her a bottle. Helen had long dark hair with an auburn tinge and was said to have her mother’s pretty upturned nose. Valerie was nothing like her to look at, she took after her father.

  Pete’s birthday cards were still spread along the mantelpiece. ‘Pete,’ she blurted out. ‘Where is he? Is he all right?’

  She knew she’d alarmed Helen. ‘No, no, I’m afraid he isn’t,’ there were tears in her dark eyes. She got to her feet and hurried the baby out to her pram on the terrace. Millie followed. The storm had passed but the day was grey and dull. She saw her settle Jenny in her pram without much ceremony. Predictably, the baby began to protest, but her mother dropped a kiss on the child’s forehead. ‘Off you go to sleep, love.’

  ‘What’s happened to Pete?’ Millie demanded. She felt she was peering through swirling mist and could feel herself swaying. She groped to a chair for support. ‘Tell me.’

  Helen took her hand and led her back to the rocking chair in the living room. ‘There’s no easy way to tell you, Millie. Dad was dead when we got him out of the water.’

  ‘Oh God! He drowned?’

  ‘No, they did a post-mortem on him this morning and found there was very little water in his lungs.’ She mopped at her eyes and blew her nose. ‘You told us he’d been swept overboard by the boom . . .’

  ‘That’s what Sylvie said.’

  ‘Well, it cracked him on the head; we could see a big wound. They say it fractured his skull and that he was probably unconscious when he went into the water. That would be why he didn’t help himself.’

  Millie felt tears burning her eyes. ‘It all happened so quickly, I wasn’t able to take it in.’

  ‘You did marvellously well, bringing the boat back safely. Val and I are very impressed with that. It could have been much worse.’

  ‘Where is Val?’

  ‘She took the twins out walking to tire them out. She thought she’d better ring Uncle James to let him know about Dad. He sent his deepest sympathy to you.’

  Millie sniffed into her handkerchief. James and Pete had not got on well, but Pete had been two years older and head of the family. Because James was a virtual invalid and had hardly come to the office in recent years, Pete had run the business and they’d all relied on it to earn them a living.

  ‘He’s quite worried, Millie, about how the firm is going to manage without Dad.’

  That thought was like a kick in the stomach to Millie. Pete was going to be missed both at home and at work. She was reminded that it was very much a family business. This was a total calamity, she couldn’t face it. ‘How’s Sylvie?’

  ‘Her hands were raw and bleeding from pulling on the rope. The doctor dressed them.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She hasn’t woken up from the sedative yet.’

  ‘Yes I have, well, I’ve half woken anyway.’ Sylvie staggered in and slumped down on the sofa. ‘I know Dad isn’t all right,’ she choked, ‘but what’s happening?’

  Helen started to repeat the sad tale. Millie couldn’t bear to hear it all again and went out to the terrace. Jenny’s sobs were quieter, she was settling, but Millie picked her up as much to comfort herself as the baby.

  Back in the living room Sylvie was sobbing noisily. Millie joined her on the sofa and sat as near to her as she could. She put one arm round her shoulders and pulled her closer. ‘I can’t believe this has happened to Pete. He was so careful with everything.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, Mum,’ Sylvie wept, burying her face on Millie’s shoulder. ‘I didn’t mean to hurt Dad, please forgive me.’

  ‘There’s nothing to forgive, love . . .’ It was a disaster that would change her life and those of all the family for ever, and it had happened so quickly.

  ‘It’s all my fault. I persuaded Dad to come back yesterday through that awful storm.’

  ‘I know it’s a terrible shock, love, but you mustn’t blame yourself.’

  ‘He wanted to stay there until the storm passed over, he was ready to stay all night. But I wanted to go to the Buckley Arms for dinner, I had a new dress to wear and I told him how much I was looking forward to it.’

  Millie said firmly, ‘Sylvie, it’s not your fault, you mustn’t think like that. Dad decided to come home because he knew Helen and Valerie would be worried if we didn’t turn up.’

  ‘Worried?’ Helen sobbed too. ‘What would that matter? Being worried is nothing compared to losing him like this.’

  ‘See what I mean?’ Sylvie lifted a face ravaged by tears. ‘I didn’t realise how bad that storm was, and I thought having a meal out was more important than his life.’

  ‘You didn’t know.’ Millie held her tight. ‘We none of us knew what would happen.’

  ‘What are we going to do now?’ Sylvie sobbed. ‘How are we going to manage without him?’

  ‘I don’t know, love, I’ve been asking myself that, but it wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘It’s utterly terrible,’ Helen said, ‘but you mustn’t blame yourself, Sylvie. Dad wouldn’t want that.’

  Millie was worried about Sylvie, her beautiful eyes were puffy and red-rimmed. She kept breaking down in floods of tears if any of them spoke to her, even when they were trying to be kind. The accident cast a black cloud over everything and they talked endlessly of Pete.

  They all wanted to get away from Hafod and its raw memories, and the next day Millie and Sylvie, with Helen and her baby, took the train home to Liverpool. Valerie elected to stay because she felt somebody needed to as there were a hundred and one things to be arranged and ends to be tied up. She said her husband Roger would join her at the weekend to keep her company.

  Millie was glad to be back in her own home but it had been Pete’s home for longer than it had been hers. He’d been born here and so had his father before him. His clothes and books were everywhere. She sat in his favourite armchair, fingered his favourite records and started to read the book he hadn’t
finished. She could sense his presence in every room and it drove home to her that he’d never be coming back.

  She put off going to bed, knowing she wouldn’t sleep. To be alone in their double bed would make her weep with grief and loneliness. She didn’t know how she was going to break the news to their two sons, Simon aged eleven and Kenneth aged nine, that their father had died, so she put off thinking about that too. Sylvie was inconsolable and though she appeared to be sleeping when Millie looked in on her, she was woken by her daughter’s screams at three in the morning.

  Sylvie was having a nightmare, reliving her ordeal on Sea Sprite. She clung to Millie. ‘I wish we’d never gone on that boat trip,’ she wept. ‘Why didn’t we go up Snowdon instead?’

  It took Millie half an hour to calm her. She made them both cups of tea, and took hers back to her own lonely bed. She was cold and couldn’t sleep, she tossed and turned for another hour, thinking of Pete.

  Years ago, when she’d been in trouble and couldn’t have survived without help, Pete had come to her aid. He’d been her saviour, her mainstay and prop, and he’d taken care of her ever since. She needed him now desperately. Pete had been kind and generous to everybody but particularly to her and Sylvie. They’d wanted for nothing. He’d been a loving husband, always smoothing out any little problems or difficulties she had.

  When finally Millie went to sleep she, too, had a nightmare in which she relived the storm that had caused Pete’s death; she woke up sweating and agitated.

  She was frightened and worried that she wouldn’t be able to keep his business running. Who was going to run it now? Millie had been thrown out of the cosy niche she’d lived in and was floundering. She couldn’t imagine how she’d cope without him.

  She couldn’t lie still any longer, she got out of bed and went down to the kitchen but she didn’t want any more tea. She stared out of the window feeling lost, but finally went back to bed, cold and miserable. However impossible it seemed, she would have to cope.

  Chapter Four

  Millie’s mind went back to 1928, to the days before she’d married Pete. She’d been Millie Hathaway then and those had been tough times, very tough, but she’d managed to survive. She’d faced an acute shortage of money through the years of her youth and there’d been nobody better at making one shilling do the work of two, but it was as though juggling with the pennies had scarred her mind and she now needed affluence to feel secure.

  Her early childhood had been happy though she’d never known her father except in the photograph her mother Miriam had kept on her dressing table. He’d been killed in the Great War. Her mother had always worked in Bunnies, one of the big Liverpool department stores, and loved her job, but they’d never had much money.

  When Millie was reaching her fourteenth birthday and was due to leave school, Mum had asked Bunnies if they would employ her daughter. They’d agreed, although business was not good at that time. Thereafter, they’d both set off to work in the mornings wearing their best clothes and looking smarter than those who lived in similar rooms nearby. But her mother was no longer feeling well. Her health was beginning to fail, and though she went to the doctor, he didn’t seem to help much.

  Millie had not been able to settle at Bunnies. Although employed as a junior sales assistant, most of her time was spent unpacking new stock and pressing the clothes before they were put out for sale. She was not allowed to work anywhere near her mother and was at the beck and call of other more senior staff. She ran errands, wrapped purchases and made the staff tea.

  ‘You have to start at the bottom,’ her mother told her. ‘I did. You’ll soon start serving customers, just be patient. At least you’ve got a job.’ She had, and many of the girls she’d left school with had not.

  Then she met Ryan McCarthy who lived nearby and worked for William C. Maynard and Sons who owned a factory down in the dock area. He brought her little gifts of luxury soap and tins of talcum powder that smelled heavenly, and beguiled her with stories about his job. He was seventeen now and working for the sales manager; he told her he was learning how to run the sales department. They were sending him to night school and he’d have to take exams but in a few years he’d have a job that paid a decent wage. He meant to go up in the world.

  ‘If you don’t like what you’re doing,’ he said, ‘why don’t you apply for a job with the company I’m with? They’re a very good firm to work for.’ He showed her a copy of the Evening Echo where they were advertising an opening for a school leaver to help in the laboratory attached to their perfume department.

  Her mother hadn’t been too pleased but she knew Millie wasn’t happy at Bunnies. She’d done well at school and wanted a job with better prospects. ‘Lab work appeals to me,’ she’d said. She’d applied for the job and was delighted when she got it. They gave her a white coat to wear over her own clothes and she went home in the evenings with the scent of exotic perfumes in her hair.

  Millie was fifteen when she started working for William C. Maynard and Sons. It was a small family firm with premises near Liverpool’s Brunswick Dock and an enviable reputation for its luxury products. She had always loved its scented soaps and talcum powders, as had half of England. The firm found its customers amongst the wealthy.

  Pete called it a one-horse firm because they made nothing from scratch. Instead they bought in the best quality half-prepared materials from companies that manufactured in bulk. Their soap was bought in pure shreds from a firm in Widnes and their raw material for talc was a rock-like lumpy powder from France.

  What Maynard’s did so well was to add exotic perfumes and colour, and shape the soap into large luxurious tablets finished to the highest possible standard. They were wrapped to look elegant and were advertised in the ladies’ magazines that were gaining popularity in the late years of Queen Victoria’s reign.

  Millie found she’d been hired to keep the equipment clean and be a general dogsbody. She was expected to follow Arthur Knowles, the chemist in charge, round the lab as he worked on the perfumes, helping where she could. As they moved along, he explained what he was doing and why, and he was happy to answer her questions. He recognised her interest and did his best to encourage her. She felt she’d entered a new world that was truly absorbing and was soon very content in her new job. Mr Knowles was gentle and kind and treated her like a fond child.

  She felt she had everything she could possibly want. The other young girls working near her in the office admired her handsome boyfriend, they thought Ryan McCarthy quite a catch. The only flaw was that her mother’s health continued to deteriorate and she didn’t approve of Ryan. ‘He’s wild,’ she said, ‘but perhaps he’ll quieten down and grow out of it.’

  Most of the working day Millie spent in the laboratory with Mr Knowles, and he was friendly with other members of staff who came into the department to chat from time to time. In the lunch break one or two would drop in to eat their sandwiches round his desk. Millie made the tea and pulled up a chair to listen to their conversation. Soon she was joining in.

  She discovered that the boss, Peter Maynard, took a great interest in the perfumes they made, coming occasionally to work with them. It was he who decided which of the scents would be used in the products the company made.

  She learned that every lunchtime many of the senior staff went to a small dockland café called Parker’s Refreshment Rooms in the next street. They spoke approvingly of the food there. One day Mr Maynard asked if she knew the place.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I walk past it twice a day, delicious scents drift out but I’ve never been inside.’ She’d never had a hot meal anywhere but at home.

  There was white lettering across the Refreshment Rooms’ window: ‘Large Helpings, Good Hot Meals Served Every Day, at Everyday Prices’. Millie was fascinated by the blackboard standing outside displaying the day’s menu: Irish hotpot, beef stew and dumplings, casseroled mutton c
hops, apple pie and custard, rice pudding with rhubarb. It made Millie’s mouth water just to read it.

  In the week before Christmas, Millie was thrilled when Mr Maynard brought round two of the fancy boxes of soap and talc made in the factory to catch the Christmas gift trade, and swept her and Mr Knowles out to lunch in Parker’s Refreshment Rooms. That day, there was roast pork with stuffing and roast potatoes followed by Christmas pudding.

  ‘I’ve got two daughters pretty much your age,’ Peter Maynard told Millie. He had a way of looking at her and teasing her gently. She liked him, he was popular with all his staff. They said he was a fair and considerate boss.

  Her mother no longer had the energy to do housework when she came home from Bunnies, so Millie took it on bit by bit. She got up early to do it and make breakfast for her mother. On two evenings each week, she went to night school with Ryan, and he took her to the pictures and to dances at the weekend. Millie was in love and enjoying life.

  Ryan had a friend whose family earned their living as greengrocers, making a series of weekly rounds through the residential streets of Liverpool selling fruit and vegetables from a horse and cart. Ryan earned a little extra pocket money mucking out the stable and giving the horse food and water on Sundays. Millie loved going with him to help. He had a key to the stable and considered it a valuable asset because there they could have peace and privacy.

  For the last year, her mother had been taking the odd day off work because she didn’t feel well enough to go, but Millie only realised how seriously ill she was when the doctor came to visit and told them she had breast cancer. The diagnosis seemed to knock the stuffing out of her mother and she went downhill quickly. Soon she had to give up work completely and spend much of her day in bed. She was able to do little for herself.