Winnie of the Waterfront

by Rosie Harris

‘Not exactly. They just didn’t give them to me.’

  ‘Right. They kept them and probably destroyed them, and that’s even worse. What is more, when you asked if they had any news of me they told you “no”! That was a lie, wasn’t it!’

  He sounded so angry that Winnie looked at him in surprise. Bob had always been so easy-going that it came as something of a shock to see how heated he could be.

  ‘You were a very special friend,’ he pointed out, ‘and I knew no one at all on the outside, so when you didn’t even bother to answer my letters I felt really deserted, I can tell you.’

  ‘I felt hurt that you hadn’t kept your promise,’ she reminded him.

  ‘You still had the security and familiarity of the place you were used to, though. I was in a world I wasn’t used to, full of strange people, and I didn’t know who to trust or where to turn. I didn’t know how to go about living in the outside world. Everything was so strange that I felt like an interloper.’

  ‘What made you decide to go to sea?’

  ‘I thought it couldn’t be any worse than living in a hostel where I didn’t like the people and nobody cared what I did or where I went. All that seemed to matter to them was that I obeyed the rules to keep my room tidy, and that I was in before ten every night and went to Mass on Sundays.’

  ‘I think they must all have the same rules,’ Winnie murmured. ‘That sounds pretty much the same as the hostel I’m in.’

  ‘Like you, I didn’t have any friends at work either,’ Bob went on, ‘so I was pretty miserable and terribly lonely. I only signed on for a year, though, in case I didn’t like going to sea either. Now I’ve tried it I like it so much that I want to go on doing it and make it my career.’

  ‘Will you sail all over the world?’

  ‘Not with Blue Funnel line. They only go to the Mediterranean and back, but I love the life.’

  ‘And it’s giving you the chance to see other countries?’

  ‘Yes! When we put into port I always go ashore and have a look round. I might transfer to another line later on where they have ships that sail to America and Australia so that I can see more of the world.’

  ‘It sounds exciting,’ Winnie agreed.

  ‘I couldn’t bear to go back to factory work and be shut in again. Even when it’s blowing a gale and we are being tossed around in the Bay of Biscay it is better than being in a factory.’

  ‘I don’t think I want to stay doing the job I’m doing either,’ Winnie confided. ‘As soon as my six months is up I’m going to look for something else.’

  ‘Why wait six months? No one from the orphanage ever checked up to see if I was all right at the hostel or at the factory. If I’d known that I would have left at the end of the first week,’ he told her.

  Before they parted, Bob to go to his ship and Winnie to make her way back to the hostel, they agreed that they’d meet again next time he came ashore.

  ‘What if I’ve left there,’ she frowned as she gave him the hostel address.

  ‘You could always leave a letter for me at the Blue Funnel office.’

  ‘Supposing it gets lost, or they forget to give it to you?’

  ‘It’s May now, so we should be back in Port towards the end of November. You can check on the exact date of arrival at the shipping office. I’ll be here, at this very spot, at six o’clock every night for as long as the ship is in port. How about that?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  MAGGIE WEEKS WAS waiting for Winnie when she arrived for work the next morning.

  ‘Enjoy your dirty weekend?’ she sneered.

  ‘Dirty weekend?’ Winnie frowned. ‘I don’t know what you mean. It was a wonderful weekend. The sun was shining and it was so warm that …’

  ‘Oh shut your gob! You know what I’m talking about so don’t play the innocent.’

  Winnie looked across at Sonia, her eyes puzzled.

  ‘She means you going off with that red-haired whacker from Paddy’s Market.’

  ‘Spent the weekend shacked up with him, did you?’ Maggie persisted. ‘You were all over him like a bloody rash, sickening it was.’

  ‘We went to the same school when I was a small kid,’ Winnie told her. ‘We hadn’t seen each other for years.’

  ‘Making up for lost time, were you?’

  ‘Yes, something like that,’ Winnie admitted. ‘He used to push me to school in my invalid chair when I was eight years old.’

  ‘So you lived round Great Homer Street way, did you?’ Sonia said in surprise. ‘Does he still live there?’

  Winnie looked taken aback. ‘I suppose he does. I didn’t ask him.’

  ‘Bet she’s lying,’ Maggie snapped. ‘If they was all that close she’d know where he lived. She was trying to pick him up.’

  ‘Fancied him yourself, did you, Maggie?’ another girl, Polly Webster sniggered. ‘Fancy losing out to a cripple.’

  ‘Put a sock in it, you great fat cow!’

  The next minute Maggie and Polly were at each other’s throats, scratching, screaming and tugging at each other’s hair while the other girls gathered round, taking sides and shouting encouragement.

  The foreman intervened before either of them were too badly hurt. Roughly, he dragged them apart, promising both that they’d get a bunch of fives if there was any more disturbance.

  ‘She’s the one who started it,’ Maggie screamed, pointing a finger in Winnie’s direction.

  ‘I don’t give a damn who or what set you alley cats off, all I’m interested in is how much work you can get through. Now get on your perches and get stuck in, and no more trouble. Understand?’

  As Maggie had warned her, they all had different jobs and Winnie found herself responsible for laying out the shirts and folding the sleeves back so that they lay perfectly flat and parallel to the edges of the shirt, before they moved along the line to Maggie.

  For the first few minutes all went well and Winnie thought that the bickering was over and they were all on good terms again. Then Polly, who was working further down the line than Maggie, and who was responsible for placing the shirts into the packing box after Maggie had folded them into three, raised a hand to draw Bert’s attention.

  ‘Well, what is it now?’

  ‘None of these are folded properly,’ she complained.

  ‘What’s wrong with them?’ he barked as he strode over to take a look.

  ‘It’s the cuffs, they’re all buckled over.’

  Bert checked them for himself then turned on Maggie. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he demanded.

  Maggie shrugged. ‘I folded them into three as I’m supposed to do. That’s how they came to me; it’s the fault of the person who straightened them out after the stiffeners were put in.’

  Bert looked back along the line, his gaze falling on Winnie. ‘You careless cow,’ he snarled. ‘Can’t you do anything right?’

  ‘I did do them right,’ she protested. ‘They were folded properly when they left me.’

  ‘Trying to put the blame on me, are you?’ Maggie challenged. ‘What’re you implying, eh? Are you saying I twisted them round after you passed them on.’

  Winnie caught the look of triumph on Maggie’s face as she winked at Sonia and her temper flared. ‘It’s more than likely that is what you did,’ she declared spiritedly.

  Maggie swung down off her stool as if she was going to go for Winnie. As she did so, her foot landed on the end of one of Winnie’s sticks and she screamed as her ankle twisted under her and she fell heavily.

  ‘Those bloody sticks!’ Bert exclaimed angrily. ‘I knew they’d cause an accident sooner or later.’

  ‘They were tucked under my stool,’ Winnie protested.

  Bert shook his head. ‘That’s a feeble excuse and you bloody well know it. I’ve had enough. Come on, down off that perch and get out. I’ve had enough of you, you’re nothing but a troublemaker.’

  Shaking, Winnie clambered down and picked up her sticks. ‘Where do you want me to go?’


  ‘Go where the hell you like as long as you get out of my sight. You’d better go in the office and collect what money is due to you, and then get out of the building and don’t come back.’

  The colour drained from Winnie’s cheeks. ‘Are you sacking me?’

  ‘Too bloody true I am!’

  ‘But I’ve done nothing wrong. I folded every shirt exactly the way I was told to do!’

  ‘Go!’ His face red with anger, Bert pointed towards the door. ‘Out! Out!’ he yelled.

  Tears trickling down her cheeks, Winnie hobbled towards the door. A feeling of panic engulfed her. She didn’t like working there, she didn’t trust any of the girls, but she needed the job, she had to earn money to pay for her accommodation at the hostel.

  Her heart thundering in her chest, she made her way to the office as Bert had told her to do. The blonde, thin-faced woman regarded her disapprovingly as she explained what had happened.

  ‘If you’re sacked then you’re sacked,’ she said primly, her bright red lips tightening. ‘By rights you should come back on Friday to collect your money, but since there is only half a day due I suppose I can pay you out of the petty cash.’

  ‘You owe me for last week as well,’ Winnie told her.

  Frowning, the clerk consulted her ledger then went to a safe in one corner of the room and brought out a small brown envelope. ‘Winnie Malloy?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  The woman pushed a piece of paper towards her, but held on to the envelope. ‘Sign here, then.’

  Winnie signed her name and then held out her hand for the envelope.

  ‘There you are, now go on, leave the premises.’

  ‘You still owe me for the work I’ve done this morning.’

  For a moment Winnie thought she was going to refuse to pay her. Then, her mouth turned down in a sneer, the woman opened a tin box that stood on top of her desk and picked out one shilling and three pennies and slammed them down on the desk. ‘There you are, now leave!’

  ‘Thank you.’ Winnie picked up the coins and made her way awkwardly to the door and then slowly out of the building.

  As she walked towards the tram stop she wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or upset. She’d been sacked from her job after only one week, and even though she’d hated every moment she’d been there she still felt there was a modicum of disgrace attached to such a thing happening.

  However, it was a such a beautiful summer’s day, with the sun shining and blue skies overhead, that her feeling of despondency soon melted away. She had enough money in her pocket to pay for her lodgings for at least another week, so surely she could find herself a new job in that time, she told herself confidently.

  Bob Flowers watched the Liverpool skyline slowly disappear as the Patricia made her way down the Mersey, past Perch Rock and New Brighton. When they reached The Bar the tugs cast off and they were away into the open sea.

  It would be six months before he saw the Liver Birds perched proudly on top of the Liver Building again; six months at least before he saw Winnie Malloy again.

  He couldn’t get over the surprise of bumping into her like that. He felt furious that the nuns at Holy Cross hadn’t given her his letters. All this time he’d been thinking she didn’t want him to keep in touch with her, and she’d been thinking the same about him.

  For the first time since he’d started going to sea he wondered if, after all, he’d been rather hasty in deciding it was the right sort of future for him. Up until now it hadn’t mattered because there was no one in Liverpool, or anywhere else for that matter, who gave a damn about him. Now, having seen Winnie Malloy, knowing it would be six months before he would see her again seemed like a lifetime.

  He hoped she would remember her promise to meet him at the Pier Head in November. By then she would probably have built a whole new life for herself, and he found himself wondering where he would figure in it.

  Mondays were the quietest day of the week at Paddy’s Market. For Sandy Coulson it was the day when he was supposed to tidy out all the storage space, clean up the barrows and sort out all the clobber that hadn’t been sold the previous Saturday.

  It was the day when Sandy also took stock of his life and daydreamed about the future. He didn’t intend being a market porter for the rest of his life. As soon as he could save the ackers he was going to have his own business, and once that was underway then in no time at all he would make his fortune.

  Getting started was the big thing. First of all he’d have a stall in the market, and the moment that took off he’d get someone to run it. The next step would be to buy a van, and after that he’d open a shop. Only one to start with, but one day he’d have a whole chain of them all across Liverpool and the Wirral.

  The biggest problem of all would be deciding what he was going to sell. He was watching points, sizing up which of the market stalls did the best trade. He’d already discovered that having the greatest number of customers wasn’t the same as making the most money.

  Up until now it had all been a bit of a dream. Something he’d kept in his head because it encouraged him to squirrel away some of his wages each week rather than spending it all at the pub. He liked a pint, but he always made sure that when he did go for a bevvy he didn’t ever get legless and lose control. If you did that you got rolled and all your ackers vanished in a flash. He’d seen it happen so often to other people.

  Meeting up with Winnie Malloy after all these years had made him want to turn his daydreams into reality more than ever. It had brought back memories of his childhood and hers, when they’d shared the grub his mam had packed in his lunch tin because the cupboard had been bare at Winnie’s home.

  He remembered her father, Trevor, asking him to keep an eye on Winnie and push her to school and back each day in the wheelchair contraption. It had been tough luck on Winnie that her dad had gone off to war and never come home again. Reported missing, if Sandy remembered right.

  Her mam had been useless. After hearing the news of her husband she’d gone completely off the rails, and when she’d died Winnie had been packed off to the Holy Cross Orphanage.

  It made you think some people had all the bad luck, Sandy reflected. He’d written to Winnie once after she’d been put in the orphanage, but from what she’d told him she’d never been given the letter.

  Those nuns sounded a right lot of old mingy-arsed miseries and no mistake. Fancy snatching the wheelchair back off her when she had to leave there. Downright mean! Seeing her struggling to get around on those two sticks had made Sandy’s blood curdle.

  He liked Winnie. She never winged or fretted about being a cripple. She was the first person he’d ever confided in about what he wanted to do in the future. She had taken everything he’d said about getting his own stall so seriously that it had cleared every scrap of doubt from his mind. He knew now that he could do it if he really worked on it.

  On her way back to the hostel in Craven Street, Winnie tried her luck at two other factories as well as at a newsagent’s and a warehouse without any success. As soon as they realised she was disabled she found they weren’t even prepared to consider employing her.

  ‘Sorry, luv, we’ve nothing that you could do here. You need to be fit, and there’s plenty of those sort looking for work as it is.’

  As a last resort she went to see if there was any work at the Royal Infirmary.

  ‘You look as though you should be a patient here, luv, not trying to get work here,’ the girl on the reception desk commented. ‘There’s far too much running around and nipping up and down stairs even for us clerks. You wouldn’t be able to do a cleaning job either, not crippled the way you are. You need to look for a sitting-down job in an office, something like that.’

  Winnie knew she was right but she didn’t bother to explain that she had no training for that sort of work. Knowing that there was no point in going back to the hostel until the end of the day she bought herself a bun and a bottle of lemonade and went into St John’s Ga
rdens to sit in the sun to enjoy them.

  The thought of being confined to a factory, or even an office, suddenly seemed untenable.

  If only she was fit, she thought, she’d like to work right here, looking after the flowers, feeling free and breathing fresh air, even if it did mean being out of doors in all kinds of weather. That was what Bob Flowers had told her had made him take to the sea. Well, she thought sadly, she couldn’t do that either.

  The answer of what she might be able to do, and which would also mean more freedom, was Sandy’s suggestion of working at the market the same as he did.

  She thought back over the scene on Saturday: the stalls piled high with second-hand goods, well-worn clothes hanging on makeshift rails, factory rejects, damaged goods of all kinds, and people pushing and shoving and grabbing for the things they wanted. Then came the haggling and bartering over the price of items. Was that really the sort of life she wanted?

  Only the poorest people from the slums that crisscrossed between Scotland Road and Great Homer Street went to barter in Paddy’s Market. It was the only way they managed to make their money go as far as it possibly could.

  St John’s Market, near the centre of Liverpool, was quite different. The stalls were well laid out, the merchandise as good as you could buy from any shop, and there was no shame attached to shopping there.

  Sandy had talked of having his own stall. She wondered how much more expensive it would be to have a stall in St John’s Market compared to one in Paddy’s Market. Probably well beyond our pockets, she decided. Even a stall in Paddy’s Market would possibly cost too much for us she thought despondently.

  Chapter Eighteen

  THE WEEK SEEMED to fly by. When Thursday arrived and she still hadn’t found any work, Winnie became so concerned that she found it difficult to think straight.

  Every morning she left the hostel at the same time as she would have done if she’d being going to the factory. She also made sure that she arrived back at the time she would normally have done each evening. Whatever happened, she didn’t want Miss Henshaw finding out that she had lost her job in case she reported it back to Sister Tabitha.