The Mersey Angels

by Sheila Riley

  ‘You deserved the chance of a better life, you and Nipper,’ Ruby said, knowing Jerky and his father were the shrapnel Izzy had been forced to endure for years.

  ‘Although, when my ’usband, Splinter – they called him that because of the surname – when he drowned in the dock, all the neighbours rallied round. Good as gold they were,’ Izzy said. ‘Splinter was well soused when they fished him out, which didn’t surprise me. I didn’t see him of course, but I was told you could smell him a mile off.’

  ‘I’m sorry for your loss,’ Ruby said, and Izzy shrugged her thin shoulders. Sitting at the kitchen table that was covered in a blue checked cotton tablecloth, Ruby was not shocked when Izzy said:

  ‘Losing Splinter was the best thing that ever happened to me. That and Jerky being locked up gave me the peace of mind I didn’t know I needed.’ Izzy was silent for a moment and Ruby suspected the thought had only just occurred to her, especially when she added, ‘I was like a caged bird set free.’ She handed Ruby a cup of tea in a matching cup and saucer, and Ruby knew this was something that would have been unheard of in days gone by. ‘Nothing could hold me back. And when your Archie offered me the job in the pawnshop, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.’

  ‘I’m glad the tide turned for you,’ Ruby said, trying to fathom what kind of terrible life Izzy must have endured, to accept the death of her husband, the detention of her son and see a job in the pawnshop as a gift from the gods. ‘You have a lovely home.’ Ruby did not know what else to say and pounced on the first thing to enter her head as she took in the old but well-kept furniture, the polished wood, the pristine linoleum covered in bright, clean rag-rugs, the well-banked fire and the lingering smell of fresh-baked bread.

  ‘“They can take away all your money”, one wise old Mary-Ellen told me at Splinter’s funeral.’ Izzy leaned back in her chair, telling Ruby. ‘Her wispy white hair was covered in the black mantilla she kept specially for the occasion, and she said…’ Izzy lowered her voice in mock seriousness, ‘“you might not have two farthings to rub together, Missus, but you can hold your head up, you’ve a spotless home”.’ Izzy threw her head back and laughed again, something she did often these days, Ruby noted. ‘How’s that for getting your priorities, right?’ Izzy gave a determined nod of her head. ‘It doesn’t matter that I didn’t have a pot to piss in, excuse my language, and my husband got so drunk he landed hisself in Bramley-Moore dock – but as long as I had a nice clean house, I was respectable.’

  Ruby laughed too. Izzy’s impeccable standards of homemaking were obvious everywhere she looked. Even the cheap pottery dogs on either side of the fireplace were gleaming and had not seen the inside of Archie’s pawnshop since she started working there.

  Respectability was the heavy burden some women relished. But Ruby pooh-poohed the idea, finding the notion suffocating and intolerable, therefore ignoring it completely. At her father’s behest all those years ago, she had left his house and made him a promise, which Izzy would probably find scandalous. Ruby vowed to the great man, the master shipbuilder, Silas Ashland, that she would shame him in any way she could after what he had done. Ruby then struck out to live, work, and love in her own way. She vowed not to marry until her father was dead, knowing if she had married Archie before he died, she would be disowned, only marrying her beloved Archie to make them legally one after her father’s death. She knew the shame of an illegitimate birth, and her living in sin with Archie for all those years would have been the biggest ignominy to be heaped on her father’s shoulders, and that was why he had kept the secret hidden within the family for all those years.

  ‘So, what can I do for you today, Mrs Swift?’ Izzy said from the other side of the table.

  ‘Two things,’ Ruby said, placing her cup on the saucer, ‘what would you say to a live-in position. Rent-free.’

  Izzy felt her spirit’s plummet knowing Ruby’s home at Ashland Hall was a country estate set in hundreds of acres opposite the golden north-west shores overlooking the Mersey estuary. Nipper, at sixteen and the apple of her eye, had gone off with his head held high and shoulders back to shoot the Hun. When he came home a hero, she knew he would want to come back to the dockside. ‘A live-in position?’ she considered the request then said, ‘I could not hold my son. So, I gave him wings and let him fly. But when he is ready to come back, his home is here on the dockside, with me.’

  Everybody round here knew Ruby had inherited the grand house after her father drowned when the Titanic sank on its maiden voyage. Most were surprised she had come from such a grand family, but not Izzy. She knew Ruby had something about her that was much more refined than many people she had met.

  ‘Rent-free?’ Ruby’s tone was full of persuasion and she waited.

  Izzy loved living round the dockside. She knew these people. They were her people. But how could she possibly refuse such a wonderful position without causing offence? Especially after everything Ruby Swift had done for her in the past. ‘You’re asking me to move to Ashland Hall?’

  ‘Not live at Ashland Hall,’ Ruby answered, and Izzy did her best not to look too relieved, ‘I need someone to live over the shop, so to speak.’

  ‘Over the shop, Mrs Swift?’ Izzy looked puzzled. ‘I don’t understand…’

  ‘It’s like this,’ Ruby said, outlining her thoughts with the tip of her finger on the tablecloth, ‘Archie and I have moved to Ashland Hall on a permanent basis, as you know, but we don’t want to give up the pawnshop or the Emporium completely.’

  ‘I’m not surprised,’ Izzy said, ‘you love the Emporium. Not that I ever went in there, much, but I would cheer myself up by looking in the window. The Emporium weren’t for the likes of me, not having two ha’pennies to rub together.’

  ‘You would be surprised, Izzy,’ Ruby replied, ‘some of my best customers didn’t have any money to begin with, either.’

  ‘Well, you live and learn,’ Izzy said, ‘but what’s all this got to do with me?’

  ‘Archie and I feel we must do our bit for our brave boys like Nipper, so we met up with the Red Cross Society at the Town Hall and decided the Emporium would be better served as a charity shop to aid the war effort. Father’s vessels have been commissioned as hospital ships for the duration. And, as Archie has volunteered for the police force, he cannot spare the time to run the pawnshop,’ Ruby answered.

  ‘Blimey,’ Izzy’s eyes widened, ‘you lot don’t do things by half, do you, Mrs Swift.’

  Ruby smiled. She liked Izzy’s forthright manner, and her inability to hide her true feelings. What you saw was what you got with Izzy. ‘Lottie will run the charity shop with volunteers from the Red Cross, while Archie and I were hoping you would manage the pawnshop.’

  ‘Me? A manageress? I never thought I’d see the day.’ The relief caused Izzy to let out a little squeal of delight. ‘I would like that, very much, and I’m thrilled you trust me. I won’t let you down.’

  ‘I know that,’ Ruby said. Then she smiled and said in a mock threatening voice, ‘I know where you live.’

  Izzy threw her head back, laughing. The day just kept getting better, ‘You said two things?’

  ‘As a live-in caretaker, I will pay you, obviously.’

  ‘You want me to move into your fine home?’ Izzy could not believe her ears.

  ‘Rent free,’ Ruby hastened to add, ‘but there is one condition… Lottie will be moving in too. She has been like an arm without a body since her mother died last year, and I know she has a soft spot for you.’

  ‘For Jerky, more like.’ Izzy knew Ruby would not entertain the idea of her son living over The Emporium, and nor would she. Jerky was the living embodiment of his father and was not to be trusted. If truth be told, she felt sorry for poor Lottie, who was as gullible as she herself had once been. ‘Poor cow – he’d sell her the Liver Buildings and she would gladly pay.’ She paused for a moment, obviously working something out before she said: ‘It’s best she lives with me, come to think of it. I can keep me ey
e on her, and there is less chance of her becoming prone to Jerky’s persuasion.’ Both women knew exactly what Izzy meant and, as women of the world, neither felt embarrassed by the implication. ‘So, Mrs Swift, your offer suits me right down to the ground.’ A responsible job and a respectable address. Izzy could think of nothing better. Except possibly, that her eldest lad may do something she could be proud of when he was released from prison. ‘Will I lose my home if my circumstances change?’ Izzy asked, suspecting her tenure over the pawnshop would end when her job did and was silenced when Ruby put up her hand.

  ‘You have no need to worry on that score,’ she said, ‘you can stay in the flat for the rest of your days. There is no time limit.’

  ‘Oh, Mrs Swift, I don’t know what to say.’ There were tears forming in Izzy’s eyes. ‘It’s not right what some of them round here say.’

  ‘What do they say, Izzy?’ Not that she was worried, but Ruby liked to know where she stood in the parish. She saw Izzy’s cheeks grow pink and realised she was not as old at close quarters as she initially reckoned.

  ‘I don’t listen to a word of it.’ Izzy knew she had made a mistake voicing her thoughts and wondered how she was going to put it right without offending Mrs Swift. ‘It’s not right they say you are a hard woman.’

  ‘But they are right, Izzy. I am a hard woman.’ Ruby smiled. ‘I do as I would be done by. And I take no prisoners. Especially with those who cross me.’ Ruby stood up to leave. ‘Life taught me to be strong in my beliefs. And I believe you are one of the most honest women round here. Otherwise, I would not have given you the time of day.’

  Izzy studied the other woman for some moments, then she too smiled.

  ‘I like it when I know where I stand,’ Izzy said. Then she tilted her head to one side. ‘I think we are opposite ends of the same stick, you and me.’

  2

  ‘What’s the war got to do with us?’ Jerky Woods was outraged when he was given a white feather by a passing suffragist. He’d had his sentence extended to the end of May due to fighting. ‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ he said to Lottie as the gates of Walton prison slammed behind him and gave a two-fingered salute when he saw the posters of Lord Kitchener telling Britain’s men that their country needed them. ‘Let’s get away from here,’ he said, walking in the opposite direction of the recruiting office. The Military Service act, introduced in January, meant he would be required for subscription. All single men aged between eighteen and forty-one were obliged to be called up, but he had no intentions of fighting. Not after the year he’d just had. Having been incarcerated in Walton Gaol for incitement to violence during The Lusitania Riots, twelve months ago, Woods had no intentions of joining up, if he could avoid it, he would, especially when he saw the headlines on a local billboard outside the newsagent’s shop about the mounting casualties. Brave men, one and all, said the headlines. Well, brave they might be, but he wasn’t stupid enough to get called up. Married men were not being conscripted.

  ‘I am so glad you are out of that awful place, Jerry.’ Lottie did not believe her Jerry would do the wicked things he had been accused of. ‘I can’t understand why Ruby won’t allow you to live with me and your mother over the Charity shop, there’s plenty of room.’

  ‘So, the Emporium is now the charity shop?’ Jerky said. ‘I see Lady Ruby didn’t waste much time getting out of the dockside.’

  ‘I’ve been put in charge,’ said Lottie proudly. ‘We send little comforts out to the troops fighting at the Front, cigarettes and sweets, that kind of thing.’

  But Jerky was not impressed.

  ‘Why should I risk my neck when the beak could do something so heartless as to side with a Hun pork butcher and a German jeweller against one of his own countrymen? It’s a diabolical liberty. That’s what it was.’

  Hot-headed Jerky was incensed at the idea and Lottie could see he was building himself into a tizzy. She would have to try and calm him down, worried he might be tempted to smash some more windows.

  ‘The authorities said the jeweller wasn’t a German, he was Polish.’ Nevertheless, she felt the power of his wrath in the glare he gave her, trying to ignore an old neighbour who called from across the cobbled road, ‘They finally let him out then?’

  Lottie straightened her back and put her nose in the air, trying to disregard the old wives of Queen Street tut-tutting and saying in a voice loud enough for both of them to hear that her mother would turn in her grave if she knew who her daughter had taken up with.

  ‘Why does she want to trouble herself with the likes of him?’ Lottie heard the neighbour ask her companion. ‘She’s got that special place in the charity shop.’

  ‘He’ll drag her down, just you wait and see,’ said another woman.

  And although the comments were like needles in her flesh, Lottie chose to appear to pay no heed. She would show all of them how wrong they were about her dear Jerry. He had a good heart, and they didn’t see the man she saw. They were prejudiced.

  ‘What do they know, Jerry?’ she said as dismissively as she could manage.

  ‘Do you have to call me that?’ he asked. ‘I’ve answered to Jerky all me life.’

  ‘I think Jerry suits you better,’ Lottie said, with her head held high, linking her arm through his and passing the old Mary-Ellens dressed in their black shawls, singing loudly and proudly as more soldiers marched off to war. Lottie watched for a moment. She would have sung too but not while she was with Jerry.

  ‘I don’t see the point in going to war,’ he said, as they ambled along the pavement, dodging young boys with sticks of wood pretending they were machine guns. ‘Why should I fight for a country that won’t even give me a job.’

  ‘If you keep out of trouble long enough,’ said a woman who was watching the long line of soldiers marching towards Lime Street station, ‘then you would soon get a job.’ Lottie regarded the well-meaning advice from women she had known all her life as an intrusion into her privacy.

  ‘You didn’t have to meet me,’ he said as they neared The Tram Tavern, and his throat was dry for the want of a pint. ‘I would have found my own way if you gave me the address of the lodgings.’

  ‘I want you to see the place,’ Lottie said, sure that Jerky would change and look after her when they were wed.

  ‘So, where are these lodgings you managed to find then?’ Woods asked, inhaling deeply as they ambled over the bridge to the sound of men’s voices coming from the pub below, and the enticing smell of beery hops sailed up through the air and into his nostrils.

  ‘Just round this corner, it’s on the first floor,’ Lottie’s voice rose with excitement. ‘I’ve given it a good clean, and bought new curtains and a bedspread, to brighten it up, and I’ve got a pan of ox-tail soup on the go.’ She was sure that in the privacy of the lodgings, he would be much more agreeable, and the scowl he had worn since he came out of the prison gates would disappear.

  Jerky Woods hardly noticed the nice little touches Lottie had brought to the room she had found him in the lodging house not far from the docks. Noisily sucking the gelatinous marrow from the core of an ox tail, his sly eyes took in Lottie’s voluptuous curves and, now that his belly was full, he was aware of another desire, a pleasurable vibration that warmed his blood.

  But he knew he would have to change his attitude if he was to get what he wanted. The beer could wait. For now. ‘I don’t care less what anybody thinks,’ he said, knowing he had a willing supporter in Lottie. ‘I’ve got what I want right here.’ She might be a bit gullible, he thought, but she made an excellent soup, and she wasn’t such a bad port in a storm. He stretched, showing off the muscles that his daily exercise had honed, aware of Lottie’s appreciative gaze. ‘It would be nice to have a bit of a lie-down after such a delicious meal. Maybe you’d like to keep me company,’ he said, ‘and show me some of that loving you spoke so much about in your letters.’

  ‘Jerry!’ Lottie’s eyes widened in surprise. ‘It is the middle of the afternoon.’
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  ‘What does the time have to do with anything?’ Woods asked. ‘We don’t need no clock to tell us when we can be loving, do we?’

  ‘No, Jerry, of course not,’ Lottie replied. She had missed him so much but did not quite trust her loving feelings at that moment, knowing they could lead to somewhere very troubling.

  The only sound in the room was the clock ticking on the mantlepiece and Lottie felt the need to fill the heavy silence.

  ‘I was thinking of getting a job as a munitionette,’ she said as she washed the soup bowls at the sink in the corner of the one-roomed flat. Ruby would never have allowed Jerry to live above the charity shop with her and his mother, Izzy. Nor would she be able to succumb to loving feelings if Izzy were hovering in the vicinity. Jerry was bad for business, Ruby had said when Lottie asked if he would be allowed to stay in the flat. ‘The factory pay is much better than working in the charity shop,’ Lottie added. ‘We could be married in no time.’

  She promised her mother she would keep herself pure until her wedding day. Nevertheless, watching Jerry rise from the table and head towards the bed, she did not feel strong enough to resist this particular temptation. It had been so long since he held her in his arms. Since he had kissed her and told her she meant the world to him. Maybe just lying next to him… Maybe just…

  ‘I’m not allowing any wife of mine to work in munitions, Lottie, it’s far too dangerous.’ His voice was soft and inviting as he patted the mattress on the narrow iron bed, and Lottie could feel her temperature rise as a low quiver, like a light fingertip, traced her spine beneath her high-necked blouse.

  ‘Your wife, Jerry?’ she said breathlessly. How could she possibly refuse him when he wanted her to be his wife.

  Jerky Woods grinned as Lottie, looking coy, lowered herself beside him on the narrow bed. He never was very keen on that marriage lark. But a man has needs. Lottie would never succumb without the promise of a ring at least. Although National Conscription introduced in January had called for single, not married men to fight, if he had been as clever as he thought he was, Woods would have realised that conscription for married men had followed shortly afterwards.