by Sheila Riley
‘If only you knew,’ Grace murmured, realising that as her mother had nothing to brag about now she wasn’t having the big white wedding, Grace was fast becoming an irritant. And God alone knew what her mother would say if she knew about the child she was carrying. Then a thought struck her, and Grace hurried towards Skinner’s Yard.
‘Hello, Grace,’ Susie said, a smile lighting up her scornful eyes that only moments earlier had shot daggers at Evie, ‘to what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘Hiya, Susie,’ Grace said, ignoring Susie’s question and heading straight across the office. ‘Evie, can I have a word?’ she mouthed the word ‘alone,’ her back turned to Susie.
Evie gave her a knowing look to let her know she understood and said, ‘Susie, will you go and get some more stamps from the post office please?’ She waited for a moment. ‘Now, please.’
‘Slave labour, that’s what this is,’ Susie said when Evie took a ten-shilling note from the petty cash and handed it to her. Without another word, Susie headed towards the door and slammed it behind her.
‘What can I do for you, Grace?’ Evie said, when Grace sat on the straight-backed chair opposite. Grace said nothing for a moment, smoothing her hands down the folds of a brown leather clutch bag. ‘Is there something you wanted to say?’
‘I don’t know who else to turn to, Evie,’ Grace said opening the bag and taking out a white handkerchief, twisting it into a corkscrew of lace. ‘It’s like this… What I mean is… Well, I…’ No matter how hard she tried, Grace could not find the words she was looking for.
‘It’s all right, you can talk to me,’ Evie said in a tone that was not only friendly but also encouraging. She watched as the other girl’s shoulders seemed to cave in on themselves and she let out a long, deflating sigh.
‘I wanted to ask you something that is a bit… delicate.’ Grace said. ‘You worked in the office of the D’Angelo Shipping Line?’ She watched Evie nod her head. ‘Well, I was wondering if you had access to some information?’
‘What kind of information?’ Evie’s brows pleated. What kind of information could she possibly have that would interest Grace Harris?
‘Private information,’ Grace said. She was desperate. And, throwing caution to the wind she poured out the whole story of Bruce, her predicament, everything.
She could no longer hold it in; Evie had been through more than most people she knew, and she had never heard her say a bad word about anybody. Grace could not help herself; she was so overcome that tears welled in her eyes.
‘I’m sorry, Evie, I shouldn’t have burdened you with all of this.’ She liked Evie, salt-of-the-earth, trusted by everybody. ‘I have no right to take advantage of your good nature.’
‘Oh Grace, I am so sorry, we were never allowed to view the private files of shareholders.’ Evie said, getting up to make them both a cup of tea. The situation reminded her of a time years ago when Connie did much the same thing for her. ‘But there is something I can help you with.’ Evie sat back down behind the desk, and opening her battered leather bag she took out the reference she had received from Mr Walton. ‘This has got the telephone number of the company head office in London, maybe somebody there could give you more information about Mr D’Angelo.’
‘Oh Evie, you are a diamond,’ Grace said. ‘I rang The Adelphi, but unfortunately there was nobody who could help me.’
‘I do hope you manage to speak to him,’ Evie said as Grace stood up to leave, before coming round the desk and throwing her arms round Evie.
‘I won’t forget this, Evie, thank you.’ Grace could not get to the telephone box quick enough. And her hands shook as she dialled the number. Her heart hammering in her chest. She had never felt so nervous. Maybe she should put down the ’phone? As she was about to replace the receiver a woman’s voice answered.
‘May I speak to Mr D’Angelo, please?’ Grace could hear the tremor in her voice.
‘I’m afraid he is not here right now,’ the woman answered. ‘Who shall I say called?’
‘Never mind, I’ll call back another time, it’s fine.’ When she hung up, tears were streaming down her face. It’s not fine. It is certainly not fine.
The following day, taking her courage in both hands, she tried to contact Bruce again, and this time she heard his deep mellow voice, so gentle and comforting.
‘Hello, Bruce D’Angelo speaking, how may I help you?’
‘Oh Bruce… It’s me. Grace…’
‘Grace, my darling, where are you? Why didn’t you call? I tried to ring you and…’
‘Bruce, we have to talk.’
He told her he was in London but would be back in Liverpool tonight.
‘I’ll fix everything,’ he said on the telephone when she was too upset to get her words out properly, although she did not tell him about the baby. ‘Meet me at Lime Street Station. Seven o’ clock, I can’t wait to see you my darling.’
When she got home, Grace hurried past the open doorway of the front room where Ada was knitting and headed straight to her room, and as she suspected her mother wanted to know what was wrong.
‘I’ve got a headache,’ Grace called from half-way up the stairs, ‘I’m just going to have a lie down.’ She needed time to think. To work out how she was going to tell Bruce he was going to be a father.
Rinsing a flannel under the cold tap in the only bathroom in Reckoner’s Row, Grace folded it into a long strip, lay on the bed and covered her tear-swollen eyes.
A couple of hours later, Grace, dressed in a lightweight duster coat with deep turned back cuffs and a wide shawl collar, her seamed, sheer-black stockings accentuating her shapely legs and black patent leather stiletto heeled shoes, walked with her head held high towards the tram that would take her to Lime Street Station.
Nobody would dream for a moment that she was a walking bundle of nerves as she blew out a series of short breaths trying to control her racing heart.
Bruce would look after her. She was carrying his child. He would make everything right. Her emotions swung between despair and elation while she waited for the bus, and a meeting that could be her biggest adventure yet.
Dreams of a new life sustained her as seven o’clock came and went in the echo of Lime Street Station. She paced up and down the platform. Eight o’clock… Something must have happened. She worried. He’s had an accident!
Nine o’clock…! By now she was frantic. Something had happened… Grace felt a keen desperation she had never experienced before.
‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Mr D’Angelo,’ said the chief inspector of the Liverpool police force, ‘but we have had a tip-off about a member of your employ who has been involved in diamond smuggling.’
Bruce was giving the address of his entertainment’s director to the chief inspector whose name he didn’t catch, but no matter, all he was worried about was Grace. She would think he had stood her up. ‘Look, I have a particularly important meeting this evening, so if you could just get on with it.’
‘Certainly, sir, we have reason to believe that Clifford Brack and an accomplice made an exceptionally good living bringing smuggled gems into the country and getting shot of them via a Liverpool diamond merchant…’
‘Well, now you have the address you can go and arrest him.’ Bruce looked at the clock. It was nine o’ clock. Grace would have gone long ago…
The following day, Evie started work before anybody else. After a couple of hours, she took a break from the paperwork and, making a fresh pot of tea in the staffroom, she heard the telephone ring in the outer office.
‘Skinner’s Haulage.’
Placing the kettle on the single gas ring, Evie was shocked to hear Henry's voice clearly through the closed staffroom door. ‘Now you listen here, I’ve nearly run this business into the ground to pay your demands, and I'm not giving you another penny, do you hear me?’ Evie had never heard him so angry. ‘I’m not having any more of your threats. You've had enough money and it's got to stop, that's an end to it. Th
is month is your final payment.’
Evie heard Mr Skinner slam down the telephone receiver onto the cradle. Whoever he was talking to sounded like a nasty piece of work if the one-sided conversation was anything to go by. The telephone call obviously had something to do with money being siphoned from the business. Although, according to the accounts, Mr Skinner had enough money to pay the men’s wages, there wasn’t much left over to keep it going indefinitely. A shiver ran down her spine, she had left a bright warm office overlooking the River Mersey to come here, to a wooden hut of an office surrounded by the smell of horses, to do a job she might not even get paid for.
Evie swallowed hard, knowing if this business was to survive, then something would have to be done about Susie. There would be no more swanning into the office at ten past nine like she was doing right now. Susie hung up her coat and pulled out a round gold compact and checked her teeth for lipstick marks.
‘What time do you call this?’ Evie stood up, she had no intention of looking up to Susie when she told the girl that Mr Skinner was going to let her go, if she didn’t start pulling her weight. ‘We have both had enough of your slapdash ways, Susie, and if you don’t knuckle down and do some proper work…’
‘Not you, an’ all!’ Susie’s tone was indignant as she lit an untipped cigarette and blew a stream of smoke that filled the office. ‘Auld Skinner just said it’s nearly good afternoon, I told him I had to go to the post office.’
‘Could you not have gone to the post office at dinnertime?’ Evie opened the small window behind her to let out the smoke. This girl had got her own way for far too long, and it was her job to turn the business round, bring it back into profit. Susie’s wages might be the first thing to go.
‘I had to go to the Netherford post office,’ Susie said pointedly, realising Evie didn’t have a clue what she was talking about. She had taken the bus into Netherford early this morning instead of yesterday afternoon and when she got there, who should be standing outside but a man who was the image of Bert Harris.
He scuttled off when he caught sight of her getting off the bus, but she knew it was him. And after depositing Skinner’s money she made sure she was not mistaken when she sidled back into the post office, and witnessed him drawing a bundle of cash from the Skinner account.
Well, well, well, she thought, putting two and two together. Her job was safe as long as she was in possession of this kind of explosive information. And possibly an opportunity for her to make money, though she would need to find out more.
‘I found a huge pile of invoices in an old shoe-box, they should be in the file.’ Evie said, glad she had come in early. She had never seen such a disorderly filing system. ‘Your days of taking liberties are over,’ Evie snapped, and going by Susie’s glowering expression the message had got through. ‘We’ve got to get all of these invoices sent out, otherwise you won’t get paid.’
There was a moment’s silence and Evie waited for a tirade that didn’t come and was surprised when Susie marched over and slapped a sheet of stamps on Evie’s desk. ‘Well, how do you suppose we post the invoices without these?’
Going through the accounts, Evie quickly discovered the figures didn’t add up. Every month, a large payment was transferred to a post office account. But there was no name, no business address to contact the payee for an invoice. Evie’s brow pleated in confusion, knowing Mr Taxman would not be best pleased about ghostly payments disappearing like a spectre in the night and now she knew the reason. But who could be blackmailing Mr Skinner – and why?
At one o’clock, Evie decided to get out of the office for a while. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and she needed to stretch her legs. Unless she needed to get something from the shops, she usually ate her sandwich at her desk, but the weather was too nice to waste.
‘I’m going for my dinner,’ she said, pulling a lemon-coloured cardigan over her white blouse and straight black skirt. She had a lot to think about.
‘But I was going to take my dinner now.’
‘You can, when I’ve taken the hour I am entitled to,’ Evie said, ignoring the indignant flare of Susie’s nostrils as she opened the office door. A gentle breeze picked up her hair, stirring the golden strands round her cheeks, and the sunshine, stronger and warmer of late, glinted off broken glass like diamonds.
‘Penny for them?’ Danny said as he pulled up in the truck at the bottom of the Row.
‘They’re worth much more than that,’ Evie said, realising the sight of him suddenly made her day much more enjoyable. Then a thought struck her. ‘Has Mr Skinner said anything to you about money trouble, to do with the business I mean?’
‘He’s been looking a bit worried lately,’ Danny answered, ‘why, is the business in trouble?’
Evie knew Danny could be trusted with delicate information and thought it only right he should know Mr Skinner was being blackmailed. ‘Every month, he gives money to Susie to put in the Netherford post office account,’ Evie told him, hoping Danny might be able to get to the bottom of who was making these relentless demands.
‘I’ll see what I can find out,’ Danny replied, jumping out of the truck.
‘Thanks, Dan.’ Evie carried on towards her own home at the top of the street. Now that she had told Danny she felt a bit better. Poor Mr Skinner.
15
‘Don’t you miss scrubbing floors and polishing desks?’ Susie asked, feeling that Grace had really rubbed her nose in her new lifestyle, and she wanted to take it out on someone.
‘Is that your way of trying to put me in my place?’ Evie answered. At one time, she would have cowered from the kind of offensive remark Susie made, but not any more, she thought, making her way to the staffroom. The shy, invisible girl who went about her work unnoticed had gone, and in her place there was a competent young woman who knew what she wanted and had every intention of getting it, through diligence and pride in a job. Even when she was scrubbing floors, Evie took satisfaction in a job well done, and nothing had changed since.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Susie was putting the cover on her typewriter, ready to go out for her midday meal. ‘You work too hard.’ Evie was inclined to take the remark as a compliment until Susie added, ‘You make me look like a shirker.’ It was a complaint not a compliment. ‘You wouldn’t catch me working through my dinner hour for nobody.’
‘I didn’t ask you to,’ Evie answered, ‘but I do expect you to finish the invoices and filing before close of business today.’
When Susie came back from lunch five minutes late, Evie was determined she was going to pull her weight. The business was in no fit state to carry skivers.
‘I did my best to keep on top of things,’ Susie said, ‘but I’m no good with numbers. We had another girl, but she was as useful as a wax fireguard. I’ve never seen anyone who had so many ailments in my life, she was bloody neurotic, blamed it all on the war.’
It takes one to know one, Evie thought.
‘The pay in this place is bloody awful, so you don’t get the pick of good staff,’ Susie added, and Evie wasn’t so slow she didn’t see the inference was aimed at her.
‘Yes, I can see that,’ she said pointedly. Game set and match to Miss Kilgaren.
‘Let’s face it,’ Susie continued, ‘what girl wants to work in this dump every day?’
‘Well, you, by the look of it,’ Evie said, ‘but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose.’ Susie would not last five minutes in any other office.
‘Aye,’ Susie said, ‘the auld man has a soft spot for a sob story.’
Looking up, Evie stared across the room long enough for Susie to realise she understood what she was getting at.
‘I didn’t mean you got the job on account of your past, and having a family to look after, or that you got it because you only live round the corner and you’re a friend of Connie’s or anything like that…’ Susie only stopped for breath when Evie interrupted.
‘I don’t s’pose you work in a place like thi
s for the lovely view either.’ Evie followed Susie’s gaze from the window to where Danny was harnessing horses in a yard full of wagons, carts and bales of hay and straw, which he then loaded onto the hoist, ready to be sent up to the loft. ‘Or because you’re partial to the smell of horse dung.’
‘Crude.’ Susie’s nostrils flared, and her red mouth turned down in a disapproving grimace.
‘You’re lucky I said dung.’ Evie didn’t give a cat’s whisker what Susie thought of her. She was here to do a job, and, by the look of the accounts, there was enough to keep her going for an exceptionally long time.
Wrinkling her nose, Susie took the cover off her typewriter when she saw Henry Skinner. Evie shrugged and said nothing as she filled an envelope with a final notice to The Marrowbone Dog Food Company. She had lost track of the amount of unpaid bills there were, and if something wasn’t done about it soon, they would all be out of a job. Because the business was on the brink of collapsing. No wonder she had been brought in.
Evie knew she would have to crack the whip to make this business work. And crack it she would.
‘This is not a waiting room, it is a place of work,’ she said to Susie, ‘so if the yard lads think this is somewhere to hide from Mr Skinner they’ve got another thing coming. And woe betide anyone who outstays their welcome.’ Evie discouraged the yard lads from lingering by flinging a pencil in their direction which usually winged past their ears, reminding them that this was not a canteen where they could cadge a cup of tea any more.
‘I’ll just pop over to ask Auld Skinner about that pay rise he promised,’ Susie said, and Evie rolled her eyes to the ceiling. That girl would use any excuse to get out of doing a bit of work. She was taking a rise all right, but it had nothing to do with wages.
‘I was thinking about the old days,’ Meggie said, and Henry put his arms round her, knowing his lovely wife, who had denied him nothing in all their years together, had once made a starry-eyed mistake that was never far from her thoughts.
