by Rosie Harris
Their living conditions were abysmal. The two rooms were small; the main room had a low cupboard with a gas ring on it in one corner which was curtained off to serve as a kitchen. The furniture was old and decrepit and it made Lucy even more dismayed that she had left all their good furniture behind at Priory Terrace.
She knew she should have listened to Sam’s idea. At least they would have been able to go on living in relative comfort and both of them would have had their own bed to sleep in. That had been her pride again, she thought miserably. She couldn’t bear the thought of the neighbours feeling sympathetic because she had to take in lodgers.
That wasn’t the only reason, of course. There was the further shame, which she found difficult to face up to, namely Robert’s betrayal.
She had no idea how Sam felt about the neighbours finding out that Patsy was expecting Robert’s baby. If he felt anywhere near as hurt as she did, then it was breaking his heart so probably he was as glad as she was to get away before all the sniggers and whispers about what had happened started to circulate.
There were moments when she wondered if she was in some ways to blame for what had happened. She loved Robert and had thought that he felt the same way about her, and she had taken it for granted that he knew all this. Looking back, she wished she’d found more time to be with him and that she had told him how much she cared about him.
Most of all, though, she blamed Patsy. Patsy was a flirt and always had been, and Lucy even wondered if Patsy had become interested in Robert on the rebound when Percy was told to stop seeing her.
She probably thought that Robert was the next best thing, Lucy thought ruefully. Now that he’d finished his apprenticeship at Carter’s Cars and was earning a decent wage, he was quite a catch; she doubted, though, that Patsy would stay faithful to him.
She wondered where the two of them would set up home. She had a feeling that it might be with Patsy’s family or Robert’s. Most likely it would be at Patsy’s place, she mused, because Patsy would be relying on her mother to help her look after the baby.
The fact that Patsy was expecting Robert’s baby was the bitterest pill of all, but it was no good blaming him or Patsy for the mess she was in now, Lucy told herself. Abandoning their home and running away as if she was the guilty one was entirely her own fault and now she had to make the best of the situation.
The drawbacks to living in Hans Court were so numerous that every day seemed to be worse than the one before. It took up to half an hour to boil the heavy iron kettle on the pitifully small fire in the iron grate. Yet to boil up the tin kettle on the small gas ring cost so much that she dreaded having to do it.
Sam was quite resourceful; he suggested keeping the iron kettle full and over the fire all the time and then pouring enough from it into the tin kettle to make their tea.
‘It will only take a couple of minutes to boil whenever we need it. The hot water in the iron kettle will usually be hot enough for washing up or for when we want to have a wash.’
Getting washed was also something of a problem. When they had been at Priory Terrace they’d had a proper bathroom; here in Hans Court they had to wash in a bowl in the kitchen and then tip the dirty water into a bucket and carry it downstairs and empty it down the drain outside the back door. Sam couldn’t manage to do it very well because of his stick, so it was a chore that was usually left to Lucy.
The lavatory, which they had to share with the other families in the house, was out in the backyard and was a dank, evil-smelling place which Lucy hated having to visit, but there was no alternative.
The only salvation as far as she could see was that, if they were frugal, they could manage on the money she earned from charring and, as soon as they were settled in, she intended to look around and try and find some extra work or even a second job like she’d had before.
Sam was making considerable progress and he was also determined to find a job so that they could move to something better as soon as possible. There was so much unemployment in Liverpool, however, that even when Sam was lucky enough to get an interview, the moment a prospective employer noticed that he was using a walking stick, the interview was immediately over.
It seemed that no one wanted the liability of employing a man who was not one hundred per cent fit and this made Sam increasingly depressed and irritable.
‘You’ll have to start your own business, luv,’ Lucy joked in an attempt to cheer him up.
‘That’s not such a bad idea.’ Sam nodded. ‘What sort of things do men going to work need most but probably haven’t got the time to shop for?’ he mused as he helped her to get their evening meal ready.
‘Lots of things, I imagine; everything from ciggies and matches to sarnies for their lunch.’
‘Mm, but I would need quite a bit of money to buy stock to sell those sorts of things.’
‘We could try and save it,’ Lucy offered. ‘It might take a few months but it’s not impossible.’
‘We’re living on bread and scrape most of the time as it is,’ Sam told her bitterly as, one at a time, he put the bowls of soup she’d prepared on to the table. ‘No, I must think of something I can do right away and which doesn’t cost very much to set up.’
‘Well, I can’t think of anything except begging – that’s unless you fancy becoming a shoeshine boy?’ Lucy laughed as she sat down and started to eat.
‘That’s it!’ He waved his spoon in the air jubilantly. ‘That’s what I’ll do. I’ll stand down at the Pier Head each day and as all the toffs from Wallasey come off the boat I’ll offer to shine their shoes for tuppence a time.’
‘You can’t do that,’ Lucy exclaimed aghast. ‘Supposing someone we know from Priory Terrace saw you!’
‘No one from Priory Terrace is likely to be coming off a ferry boat from Wallasey, now are they, especially first thing in the morning?’ Sam argued.
‘No, you’re probably right,’ Lucy agreed reluctantly. Did it really matter all that much if they did? she thought cynically. It would probably have broken her parents’ hearts to know that Sam was thinking of becoming a shoeshine boy and that now she went out charring. Then, on the other hand, she thought philosophically, they would have been proud of the fact that instead of grumbling about losing their jobs they’d both found another way of earning a living.
‘You haven’t got the tools for the job, though, have you?’ she asked.
‘What sort of tools do I need? I said I’d polish their shoes, not repair them.’
‘You will need tins of black and brown shoe polishes, separate brushes for putting on the polish, a duster of some kind or a soft cloth to give the shoes a final polish, and something for the men to rest their foot on while you work on their shoes.’
Sam looked so crestfallen as she listed all the things that he was going to need that Lucy quickly tried to think of how they could obtain them.
‘A small wooden box or crate from the greengrocer’s, or a big biscuit tin from the grocer’s would be ideal,’ she said quickly. ‘What’s more you could carry all your brushes and polishes inside it.’
Sam’s face brightened. ‘That sounds a good idea. Is it going to cost very much for all the cleaning materials, do you think?’
‘Leave it with me for a couple of days and I’ll see what I can find,’ Lucy promised him.
Three days later and Sam was in business. Carrying the large tin was not too easy for him so Lucy found an old sack and attached a strong webbing strap to it which he could put on crosswise over his shoulder. It was still heavy and somewhat clumsy but Sam was so determined that he managed.
The first day was disappointing as he only had three customers. Lucy did her best to cheer him up, pointing out that no one had expected him to be there and that he was bound to do better the next day.
‘I’m not so sure,’ Sam grumbled. ‘They’re in such a rush as they come off the boat that they’re probably afraid to stop in case they get pushed over and trampled on.’
‘Perhaps you s
hould change your pitch, then. Move further away from the actual Pier Head so that the crowds have had a chance to thin out before they reach you. Pick somewhere halfway up Water Street or one of the other roads leading towards the Exchange and all the offices around there.’
‘Yes,’ Sam nodded in agreement, ‘I suppose I could find a better spot.’
‘If you found somewhere under the Goree Piazza, then you’d have shelter when it rains. They don’t call it the Docker’s Umbrella for nothing, you know,’ she added with a smile.
By the start of the summer Sam was doing a steady trade and sometimes earning as much as eight shillings in a week. Even after he had replenished his stock of polishes and occasionally replaced one or other of his brushes because the bristles were so worn down, he was still making good money.
Each week when he handed most of it over to Lucy, she set aside at least half of it because they were both determined to move away from Hans Court as soon as they could save up enough to do so.
Living there in the winter had been bad enough but now, in the heat of summer, it was almost unbearable. They found their two rooms were smelly and stuffy and when they opened the window the air was foul because of all the rubbish piled up in the court outside.
As well as mice and cockroaches to contend with there were countless bluebottles and other flies everywhere. Lucy made sure that every morsel of food was kept covered over, otherwise, within minutes, it was swarming with flies.
‘It’s only the end of June and it will be even hotter and smellier in July and all through August,’ Lucy sighed as she mopped at her face. ‘Perhaps it is time we took the plunge and moved to somewhere else.’
Things really came to a head when a family with two boys aged about ten and thirteen moved into the other two rooms on the same landing. They were not only extremely noisy but the boys also seemed to be up to every kind of prank imaginable.
Lucy and Sam tried to ignore their carryings on but when they started taunting Sam because of the way he walked, they both decided that they’d had enough and that it had to stop – especially when the boys started following him down the street, calling out names and imitating his limping gait.
When Lucy appealed to their mother to ask them to stop mocking Sam, instead of being apologetic or even sympathetic, she was extremely abusive.
‘You think yourself too good to be living in Hans Court, don’t you?’ she sneered. ‘I’ve heard what the others have to say about you. They all think that you’re a stuck-up bitch who walks around with her nose in the air and has no time for anybody else.’
Lucy looked bewildered. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about. I’m out at work most of the day, I haven’t got time to stand on the doorstep gossiping.’
‘You’ve got time to bad-mouth my two lads, though.’
‘I simply asked you to tell them to stop calling out names after my brother,’ Lucy said stiffly. ‘If you won’t do it, then I’ll have a word with Mrs Sparks.’
‘A fat lot of good that will do you, luv,’ the woman responded with a grating laugh.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Mrs Sparks always maintains that she keeps a very respectable house,’ Lucy told her spiritedly.
‘Maybe she does, but my two lads are her bloody grandsons and she thinks the sun shines out of their arses, so you certainly won’t find her telling them off or listening to your griping on about what’s only a bit of fun on their part.’
‘It really is time we started looking for somewhere else to live,’ Lucy told Sam wearily when she told him about her exchange with the woman later that night.
They counted out their savings and although they still didn’t have as much as they’d planned, Lucy felt sure that, providing they budgeted very carefully, it was going to be possible.
Chapter Twelve
Lucy and Sam spent as much time as they could trying to find new accommodation which they could afford, but it wasn’t easy. Some days Lucy felt so despondent that she wondered if they were ever going to manage to get away from Hans Court.
The rooms to let which were advertised in the Liverpool Echo were all far too expensive for them. They spent their evenings walking around those streets in the Scotland Road area which looked slightly better than where they were living to see if there were any cards in the windows or in the nearby shops advertising rooms to let.
A couple of times they thought they were in luck only to find that when they went to the house, someone had already pipped them at the post and rented the rooms.
‘Never mind, we’ll go on saving until we have enough to move to somewhere really nice,’ Lucy told Sam each time he became downhearted about it. ‘At least we can do that as long as we’re both earning money. You’re doing better all the time with your shoe-cleaning job and I have my charring one, and occasionally they still ask me to do a stint at the hotel at midday.’
The summer heat was overpowering and made both of them irritable. Little things which normally wouldn’t have worried Lucy made her snappy. The noise from outside in the court where children were shouting and screaming every evening until long after it was dark made her head ache. The smells of cooking that wafted through the house made her feel nauseous.
A lot of the women gathered outside in small groups in the evenings, smoking and gossiping and exchanging confidences. Although Lucy longed for a breath of fresh air she didn’t dare join them because she knew that she would not be made welcome.
She and Sam had not made friends with any of the other occupants of the house since they’d been living in Hans Court. Lucy remembered what Maggie, Mrs Sparks’s daughter-in-law, had told her when she’d complained about her two boys and knew that they regarded her as stand-offish. Apart from Mrs Sparks, few of them ever passed the time of day with her, not even when they passed on the stairs.
Lucy tried not to think about all the friends and neighbours she’d known as she’d been growing up in Priory Terrace. Things had been so very different then. Her family had often sat out in the pleasant little back garden, especially on hot summer evenings, waiting for the sun to go down and the air to be cooler before they went to bed.
Another thing which irritated Lucy was that now that it was summer the people living in Hans Court strung their washing out on lines that stretched across from one side of the court to the other.
Often they didn’t take the trouble to put their sheets and clothes through the wooden mangle that stood in one corner of the court and was available for all to use. The weather was so hot they knew that whatever they put on the line would be dry in next to no time but, several times when she’d been going out, Lucy had found herself soaked because someone had just hung washing on the line which was still dripping wet.
The other thing which Lucy found almost intolerable was the smell from the lavatories which seemed to permeate through the entire court. The one in their own backyard was bad enough and attracted hordes of flies which meant that it was impossible to have the windows open, but mingled with all the others in Hans Court the smell was quite overpowering.
During the first week of September the weather changed; it was so wet that Sam found his usual customers hurried up Water Street from the ferry to their offices and didn’t stop for a shoe-shine so his takings were pitifully low and this depressed him even more. Added to this, he found that the damp weather made his leg ache and this only served to remind him what a burden he was on Lucy.
He knew how much she hated having to live in Hans Court and how disappointed she was because they couldn’t seem to be able to find somewhere better. Perhaps he shouldn’t be relying on her to keep looking but do something himself.
The next day, as soon as the morning rush was over, he packed up his things and took them back to Hans Court, then set off on his own to see if he could locate a place to rent.
Previously, they had looked in the myriad of streets between Hans Court and Scotland Road but today he made his way to the other side of Scotland Road. He decided to start at
the top where Scotland Road and Cazneau Street met and to check out all the streets on the right-hand side as he walked down.
The houses were pretty much the same, long rows of grim terraced houses, but it was an area they hadn’t looked at before.
He had no idea where to start so he went into a newsagent’s shop on the corner of Lawrence Street, intending to buy a packet of cigarettes and then ask whoever served him if they knew if there was anything up for rental.
Inside the shop was a large noticeboard with all sorts of things pinned on to it, ranging from notices of local dances, to items for sale and, in one corner, rooms to let.
He was studying them hopefully when a small, dumpy woman with grey hair and bright blue eyes in a round, pleasant face tapped him on the shoulder.
‘You looking for somewhere to live, chooks?’ she asked.
‘Right first guess,’ he said, turning and smiling at her.
‘I suppose you want somewhere with no steps or stairs,’ she commented, nodding her head in the direction of his walking stick.
‘I carry this for protection more than anything else. I can manage stairs as long as there’re not too many of them,’ he said, grinning.
‘What about steps, steep stone steps?’
‘Yes, them as well, as long as I take my time,’ he said solemnly. ‘Why do you ask?’
‘I do take in lodgers but there are half a dozen steps up to my front door. You won’t find anything about them on that noticeboard because the couple only moved out this morning and all my other rooms are taken. Do you want to come and take a gander when you’ve bought your ciggies?’
‘I’ll come with you right away. I only came in here to see if they knew if there were any rooms to let round about. Here, let me carry that for you,’ he said reaching out and taking her shopping bag.
‘Sure you can manage it with your gammy leg?’
‘Quite sure. My name’s Sam Collins, by the way. What do I call you?’
