Winnie of the Waterfront

by Rosie Harris

  They’d make such a good pair, she thought again as she prepared for bed. It would be nice to see them team up. He was bound to be back again tomorrow to make sure that Winnie was all right, so perhaps she’d invite him to stay and spend Christmas Day with the two of them, Peg resolved as she drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  AFTER ENJOYING THE best Christmas she had ever known, Winnie felt in an optimistic mood and was sure that 1923 was going to be equally special.

  In that, she seemed to be right. Moving in with Peg Mullins changed her whole life. She was not only comfortably housed, but she felt safe. For the first time since the day her father had been called up to serve in the army she felt settled and contented.

  January was exceptionally cold and frosty. Wrapped up warmly in the red cloak that Sandy had bought her for Christmas, with the hood keeping even her ears warm, Winnie happily braved the elements. She still enjoyed her busy days working with Peg. She also loved going home with Peg each night to her cosy little terraced house in Skirving Court.

  Most evenings after the market closed Sandy went back there with them, and after a good hot meal the three of them sat round the fire talking. Sandy’s favourite topic was outlining his plans for the future.

  Peg listened to their chatter, and added her own fivepennyworth from time to time. She didn’t exactly pour cold water on Sandy’s ambitions but she certainly kept his feet on the ground with her sensible comments.

  Sandy seemed to take what she said very seriously. He knew her opinions were based on her years of experience in the market, but he usually managed to put up a strong argument that made his own ideas acceptable.

  Peg loved these verbal exchanges. Her grey eyes would sparkle and her cheeks would become quite flushed.

  The three of them seemed to be in such harmony and enjoyed being together so much that time flew by. Winter over, Easter came and went, then it was Winnie’s fifteenth birthday and before they knew what was happening it was Christmas once again.

  Sandy was still saving as hard as he possibly could. He had set himself a target and was determined that once he reached that amount then he’d ask Reg Willard if he would allocate a stall to him. Once that was achieved then he’d really feel that he had a foot on the ladder.

  Although he shared these dreams and ambitions with Peg and Winnie when they chatted together in the evenings, Sandy still kept his greatest daydream of all to himself. Several times when he had been alone with Winnie he had been tempted to tell her how deep his feelings for her were. Each time, though, the thought that at the moment he had nothing worthwhile to offer her stopped him in his tracks.

  She’s had a hard-enough life as it is, he told himself, so why should she want to spend the rest of her life with him, when he was little more than a market porter? He saw her every day and he knew she wasn’t seeing anyone else, so he kept telling himself that there was no hurry for him to speak out.

  Yet was he right? Every night as he tossed and turned in his hard lumpy bed, listening to the snores of the other occupants of the room, he kept asking himself that question over and over again.

  Was it sensible for him to postpone proposing to her until he’d achieved the first step of his great plan? Or should he speak out now?

  A stall of his own was only the start, of course. It would show her, though, that all his dreams and visions and talk were not simply hot air. In time he would build up a proper business. He wanted one that would enable him to rent a couple of nice rooms or even a small terraced house. Once he’d achieved that then they could be married and share the rest of their lives together.

  His ambition was that they should get engaged on her next birthday. She’d be sixteen then and he’d be nearly eighteen, old enough for both of them to know what they wanted from life. However, he still had to tell Winnie how much he loved her, and ensure that she felt the same way about him.

  By Easter 1924 Sandy felt confident that he had enough money saved to take the first steps towards putting his plans into action. Because he respected Peg’s opinion he confided in her about what he intended to do.

  ‘Take it slowly, son,’ she warned. ‘Reg Willard won’t be too keen about allocating a stall to you.’

  Sandy looked puzzled. ‘Why ever not? He knows I’m a good hard worker. He knows I’m reliable and that if I make a commitment then I’ll see it through.’

  ‘Yes, and he also knows that you are the best sidekick he’s ever had! He won’t want to lose you, now, will he!’

  Sandy looked taken aback. He thought about it for a couple of minutes and then saw the sense in what she was telling him, but he felt acutely disappointed.

  ‘So what do you suggest I should do?’

  Peg shrugged. ‘You could take a chance and ask him. I could be wrong, I suppose.’

  ‘No, I think you’re probably right.’ He nodded thoughtfully. ‘I’d planned on asking him and then once he’d agreed I was going to tell Winnie and enjoy seeing the surprise on her face.’

  ‘Then give it a go, whacker! I won’t breathe a word to Winnie so if it doesn’t come off she won’t be any the wiser.’

  Sandy waited until Reg was in a good mood and then asked him if there were any stalls coming up for rental in the near future.

  ‘I can always find a stall if I’m given a good reason for doing so, you should know that,’ Reg laughed cynically.

  ‘Good! I can take it, then, that I can have one if I see you right!’ Sandy exclaimed happily.

  ‘You?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Sandy grinned. ‘How soon can I have it?’

  Reg Willard scowled. ‘You don’t get one, don’t be so bloody daft!’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I said so, that’s why. I’m in charge here, remember, so don’t bother arguing. What I say goes, you should know that by now. Understand?’

  Sandy didn’t understand, but remembering all the sound advice he’d had from Peg he didn’t argue about it. There must be a way round it, he reasoned, and it was up to him to find it.

  When he told Peg and asked her what he ought to do she promised to give it some thought.

  ‘Let me sleep on it, lad, I’m sure something will come to mind,’ she told him.

  ‘Well, don’t take too long,’ he said anxiously. ‘I was hoping to be able to take Winnie for a night out on her birthday. I intended to tell her all about getting the stall at the same time as asking her if she would marry me. That would make it a grand celebration.’

  Peg slapped him on the back, her face beaming. ‘That’s your answer!’ she exclaimed jubilantly.

  Sandy looked at her blankly.

  ‘Let Winnie be the one to ask for a stall! Reg Willard will have no reason to refuse her.’

  ‘Except that she’s a girl and that she’s in a wheelchair,’ Sandy responded gloomily.

  ‘There’s four other women stallholders,’ Peg pointed out, ‘and the fact that she’s in a wheelchair doesn’t seem to make any difference to the way Winnie works, and I can vouch for that.’

  Sandy groaned. ‘If Winnie gets the stall then she won’t be able to work for you, and you rely on her so much these days, Peg. You make such a good team it wouldn’t be fair to take her away from you.’

  ‘Who says you’d have to? Once she’s got the stall she can employ you to run it for her,’ Peg told him triumphantly.

  ‘You’re a wily one and no mistake,’ Sandy laughed admiringly.

  ‘It means I’ll have to change my plans a bit, though, doesn’t it?’ he frowned. ‘Shall we explain to Winnie about the stall tonight and see what she says?’

  At first Winnie thought it a brilliant idea. Then her face clouded. ‘Where will I get the money from to pay Reg Willard, though?’ she frowned. ‘You have to pay a whole month in advance, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ve been saving up to be able to do this for ages and I’ve got it all ready,’ Sandy told her.

  ‘Then of course I’ll do it,’ she agreed. ‘What
about tomorrow?’

  ‘Not tomorrow, luv,’ Peg warned her. ‘Wait for another couple of weeks, until after your birthday. Don’t give Reg Willard the chance to say that you are too young to be a stallholder, which he might well do at the moment.’

  ‘I was going to take you out for the day on the Sunday before your birthday and to make it a double celebration by telling you I was a stallholder,’ Sandy told her.

  ‘Well, we could still do that, it wouldn’t really matter that you were celebrating being your own boss a few days in advance, would it?’ Winnie smiled.

  Sandy looked enquiringly at Peg. ‘Do you think it would be all right to do that?’

  The older woman smiled enthusiastically. Then she pursed her mouth and looked thoughtful. ‘Fine, as long as neither of you is superstitious,’ she confirmed. ‘You want to plan things very carefully before you speak to Reg Willard, mind, Winnie,’ she cautioned. ‘Don’t go rushing into things half-cock!’

  ‘We’ve got the money ready,’ Sandy reminded her.

  ‘You need more than that,’ Peg warned. ‘He’ll want to know what you are going to sell on your stall. You should be clear in your mind about that as well. He won’t want to upset any of the other stallholders so you’d better decide on something that is completely different from what all the others are dealing in.’

  ‘Peg’s right,’ Winnie agreed. ‘What were you planning on selling?’

  Sandy looked uneasy, but he promised to let them both know later that evening.

  ‘You’d better pin him down, luv,’ Peg warned Winnie. ‘That Reg Willard is a stickler you know. You’ll have to convince him that whatever it is you’re going to sell on the stall will be good for the market and be likely to bring in more customers. All that Reg cares about is making sure turnover goes up all the time so that he gets his cut.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ Winnie assured her.

  ‘Did you know that the stallholders all have to pay commission on their turnover and Reg Willard gets a percentage according to how much that amounts to?’ Winnie asked Sandy the next time she spoke to him.

  He looked startled. ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Peg did. She was quite sure about it.’

  Sandy looked worried. ‘Then I don’t think he is going to think much of my idea, do you?’ he said worriedly.

  ‘You haven’t told any of us what it is,’ Winnie pointed out.

  ‘Well, since I won’t have much money left over after paying a whole month’s rental in advance, I was planning to invite people to bring anything they didn’t want along for me to sell on a fifty-fifty basis. They get half and I get half. That way my stock won’t cost me anything.’

  ‘And how many people do you think will have things they want to sell? Most of the people who come to the market are looking for bargains in the first place. They don’t waste their money on luxuries and they only ever buy the things they really need.’

  ‘Yes, but there are things they no longer have any need for, like high chairs and cots their kids have outgrown. Everyone buys something that after a time they want to get rid of because they no longer use it.’

  ‘But when that happens they usually pass it on to someone else in the family, or swap it with a friend for something else.’

  ‘Exactly! This way, though, by bringing it along to me and letting me sell it for them they’d get money in return, and we all know that is far more useful.’

  Winnie frowned. ‘Won’t that be a bit like a pawn shop?’

  ‘Well, in a way I suppose it is,’ Sandy admitted.

  ‘But when people pawn something they can redeem it as soon as they have the money and then pawn it again the next time they are short.’

  ‘A lot of people would prefer to sell things outright. When it’s a cradle, or something like that which they’re never going to use again, then it is only taking up space,’ he argued.

  ‘How are you going to store all this stuff when you shut the stall down at night?’ Winnie challenged.

  ‘I’ll cover it all over with a tarpaulin the same as other traders do, of course.’

  ‘Won’t things get pinched?’

  Sandy ran a hand through his hair. ‘Are you trying to pick holes in my idea?’ he muttered.

  ‘No, of course I’m not!’ Winnie grinned. ‘I’m just making sure that I know all the answers when Reg Willard starts cross-questioning me about how I’m going to run my stall!’

  ‘I see! Well, the bigger items will stay covered over and the smaller items will have to be taken home.’

  Winnie frowned. ‘What sort of small items?’

  ‘I don’t know until they start bringing them in.’

  ‘Reg is bound to ask me,’ she persisted.

  ‘Well, things like teapots, vases, pictures, bits of jewellery, ornaments, watches, toys, and stuff like that. Anything that would fit into a shopping bag or a man’s pocket.’

  Winnie nodded. ‘It all makes sense to me,’ she told him. ‘Let’s hope that Reg Willard will think the same.’

  Chapter Twenty-three

  PEG AND SANDY didn’t need to ask Winnie how she had got on when she came back to Peg’s kitchen from her interview with Reg Willard. Her face said it all. Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, her expressive mouth was a tight line and there was an angry flush on her cheeks.

  ‘No luck?’ Sandy asked tersely.

  Winnie shook her head, too choked to speak.

  ‘What you need is a cuppa, luv,’ Peg fussed. ‘I’ll make one for you. We’ll all three of us have one if it comes to that, and then you can tell Sandy and me all about it.’

  Winnie nodded. She wheeled her chair closer to the table. Sandy pulled up a chair alongside her and took her hand.

  ‘That bad, was it?’

  ‘Worse!’ She shuddered. ‘That man’s so unfeeling he must be made of wood!’

  ‘So he didn’t like the idea of what would be on sale?’

  ‘We never got that far! He took one look at me and laughed. He said how could a cripple think she could run a stall in Paddy’s Market. The best thing I could do was stay where I was, helping Peg and keeping out of sight. He made me think I was a freak.’

  ‘Ssh! Take no notice!’ Sandy pulled out his handkerchief and passed it over to her. ‘Dry your eyes, I’ll have a word with him.’

  Winnie shook her head. ‘You’d be wasting your time. He guessed you were behind the application.’

  Sandy’s eyebrows shot up. ‘How could he know that?’

  ‘He said he’s been watching us ever since I first came to work here. He’s noticed you pushing my chair and how friendly we are.’

  ‘Surely that doesn’t stop him from renting you a stall.’

  ‘Oh, it does! He guessed that it was really for you.’

  ‘Then in that case I may as well have another go at him myself.’

  ‘It won’t do you any good. He said the only way he’d consider letting you have a stall was if you paid a year’s rental in advance.’

  ‘A year’s rental! That would be almost five hundred pounds! It’s taken me nearly three years to save forty pounds so that I can pay a month’s rental in advance.’

  ‘He’s well aware of that,’ Peg declared. ‘He knows you’ll never be able to afford it because he knows damn well how much he pays you each week, doesn’t he!’

  Sandy held his head in his hands and groaned.

  ‘What do I do now, Peg?’

  ‘Will you take any notice of what I say, even if I tell you?’

  ‘I might as well, you did warn me that I was wasting my time. You said Willard wouldn’t let me have a stall. Go on, what do I do now?’

  Peg stirred her cup of tea. ‘You take some of that money you’ve got saved up and you spend it on taking Winnie out for the night. Use it to have a good time. You’ll have to think of some other way of making your fortune, lad. It won’t be here in this market. As I said to you a couple of weeks ago when you first mentioned getting a stall here, Reg Willard won
’t agree because he knows he would be losing his right-hand man.’

  ‘Did you hear all that, Winnie?’ Sandy grinned.

  ‘I did, but you are hardly likely to want to take me for a night out when I’ve messed everything up!’

  Sandy shook his head. ‘Perhaps Peg is right. It’s like banging your head against a brick wall so a night out sounds a great idea to me. What about you? Are you game?’

  Winnie smiled weakly, trying to go along with his light-hearted attitude even though she knew that, like her, he was bitterly disappointed about the way things had turned out.

  ‘Depends where you’re going to take me?’ she teased.

  ‘Well, the sun is shining outside so what about the pair of you taking the ferryboat over to New Brighton?’ Peg suggested.

  ‘Could we?’ Winnie’s face was suddenly suffused with smiles.

  ‘Of course you can! Go and enjoy yourselves. You’ve a lifetime in front of you in which to make your fortune, Sandy, so make the most of what you’ve got at this moment. You never know what the future holds in store for you! Many’s the time I wish me and my Joe had gone out and had a good time instead of scrimping and saving for the future. We didn’t get a future, did we?’

  It was the first time Winnie had been on a ferryboat in her wheelchair so she wasn’t at all sure how she would manage.

  As it was she encountered no problems at all. It was early evening, but most of the office workers who came over from the Wirral to work in the shops and offices in Liverpool had already gone home.

  Sandy wheeled her down Water Street and as they reached the Pier Head landing stage they found that the Royal Daffodil was already docked, so he was able to push the chair straight down the floating roadway and onto it. He found a place on the outside deck near the rails at the prow of the boat so that Winnie could enjoy the river scene on both sides once they started to move downstream.