Daughters of the Mersey

by Anne Baker

  They’d always held their auctions in a hall that was leasehold and in 1924 the lease came up for renewal. Edward deliberated for a long time about whether he should renew it and in the end decided not to because the rent was being put up to what he considered was an exorbitant level. It upset him to see the family business going downhill.

  One lunchtime, Steve argued with his father about the value of a grandfather clock he’d bought at auction. Edward said he’d paid too much for it and Steve blamed him for the deteriorating profits in the business. The argument developed into a huge row. When the shouting died down, Leonie took a tea tray into the conservatory where she knew Edward was reading. It shocked her to see his eyes swimming with tears and she sank down in the chair beside him.

  ‘He doesn’t mean to upset you, Edward. Deep down Steve probably knows you are right, but he can’t control these terrible moods he has.’

  ‘He certainly can’t. He said some terrible things.’

  ‘You must forgive him. There are times when he hardly knows what he’s saying. I think it’s frustration that he can’t pull his weight. He wants to take his rightful place in the business but he can’t. He can’t get over what the war did to him.’

  Edward took her hand in his and squeezed it. ‘He’s lucky to have married a strong woman like you.’

  ‘I don’t feel strong, just sorry that things have turned out like this for us all.’

  ‘You are strong, Leonie, and very patient too, and you’re going to need all the strength you have. I find Steve hard to cope with now and I’m afraid that in time you may too.’

  ‘No.’ She smiled. ‘He’s my husband.’

  His hand, distorted with the swollen joints of old age, patted hers. ‘He’s not the husband you married. Steve needs you. If ever you left him—’

  ‘I won’t, I love him.’

  ‘I love him too but . . . Promise me, Leonie,’ he said, ‘that you’ll never give up on him. Promise me you’ll never leave him.’

  ‘I won’t, Edward. I promise.’

  He patted her hand again. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I won’t give up on you either. What about having this tea now?’

  For the first time in three generations the family felt short of money.

  Steve had been brought up to believe that when his father retired, the job of running the family business would be his, but he was worried that his father thought he was not up to it. Edward knew the time had come for him to make a decision, and he finally concluded that for the sake of the business, his wisest choice would be to promote George Courtney as manager. George was a distant relative, considerably older than Steve, and had been working in the business for ten years in a senior position.

  Steve was expecting it, Edward had talked it over with him, but it made him resentful and more frustrated than ever.

  Without the daily trip to the shop, Edward seemed to lose all purpose in life and began to fade away. One morning when Steve looked in on his father before going to work he found him asleep. He was still in bed at lunchtime. Leonie heated some soup and took it up for him but she couldn’t persuade him to eat much of it. She’d thought he was dozing again when suddenly he jerked into a sitting position. ‘Open the gates,’ he commanded in a more imperious voice than she’d ever heard him use before. He closed his eyes and dropped back against his pillows. It took her a long moment to realise he was dead.

  Leonie could hardly get her breath. She’d failed to understand how close to death Edward had been and that shocked and upset her. With shaking fingers she covered Edward’s face with his sheet, pulled herself upright and went to phone for the doctor, blessing the fact one had been recently installed. She was still trembling when Steve came home.

  She didn’t realise how deeply affected Steve was by the death of his father and neither did his doctor. He became completely wrapped up in his own difficulties and left the day-to-day running of the family and the home to her, and the responsibilities of the business to others.

  He’d missed several opportunities to buy stock for the shops and George had felt compelled to find somebody else to do his job. After that, Steve only went near the business when he felt like it.

  As the years went by he seemed to withdraw from Leonie and no longer wanted to join in family activities. He had good days and bad, but his black moods made him flare up at everybody and the children got on his nerves. She blessed the fact that their bungalow was large and substantially built, so the children’s noise didn’t carry to his study, but all the same it became a struggle to cope.

  The children were growing up and finding their own friends. She’d always thought the name Miles a bit formal for a small boy and when he started school and she heard his friends calling him Milo, she thought it suited him better. Only his father persisted in calling him Miles.

  Routine maintenance on the house had long since ceased. It had not been repainted for eleven years and was beginning to look shabby. There was a Victorian conservatory between the large drawing room and the music room. The roof was a dome of glass but the walls were brick and windowless. It caught the afternoon sun and Edward had grown hothouse flowers there, but now the glass panes leaked.

  The garden was no longer magnificent. Once there had been a full-time gardener and a boy to look after it, now they had an old man who came for a few hours a week in the summer to cut the grass nearest to the house. The children played in the summer house and Leonie occasionally sat there if she had time on a sunny afternoon. She’d dug over a plot and was growing vegetables to save money. That still left a large area that had reverted to field where Milo played football.

  Recently, George had suggested they sell two of the shops as they were finding it hard to buy in enough good-quality antiques to stock four outlets. The business was still turning over a small profit but it was largely being eaten up by running expenses. Fewer shops would increase the profitability of the remaining, and as they owned the freehold to all them, it would release capital for them to live on.

  It had seemed a good idea at the time, but now the knowledge that Steve had been defrauded of the money made Leonie toss and turn for hours. There was nothing else for it, she’d have to earn money to add to their income. She would have to learn to stand on her own feet. If she didn’t, life was going to be desperately hard for them all.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BY THE TIME THE ALARM went the next morning, Leonie was in a heavy sleep, but she had to get the children up for school and make them breakfast. Steve didn’t get up with them on school mornings because the noise and the rushing about gave him a headache.

  Today, she made boiled eggs with toast and a pot of tea for the children and herself. She was pleased to see them come silently to the table dressed in their school uniforms.

  They went to different schools although both caught the same bus. Milo’s school was further on than June’s and he’d been going on his own for some time before she started. In order to save the cost of her own bus fare, Leonie soon gave him the responsibility of seeing June got off at the right stop.

  Steve’s daily copy of The Times was delivered to a box at the back gate. June had taken on the job of collecting it and running back with it for her father, before she went to catch the bus.

  When Leonie waved them off at the back door and there was peace in the house again, she poured herself a second cup of tea and set about preparing the same breakfast for Steve. She set his breakfast tray and took it to the bedroom. As always, he’d put on his bedside light to read his newspaper. Usually he was still half asleep but this morning he looked agitated.

  ‘This is terrible,’ he told her. ‘I told you last night we’d lost a lot of money but this is an absolute calamity. This on top of everything else will ruin me.’ He was sitting bolt upright. When she tried to settle his breakfast tray across his knees he waved it away.

  ‘Look at this.’ He pushed the newspaper across the bed towards her.

  With sinking heart she asked, ‘Wh
at’s happened?’

  ‘There’s been a financial slump in America.’ He spoke rapidly. ‘People are throwing themselves out of skyscrapers in New York because they’ve lost all their money on the stock market.’

  Leonie wasn’t sure how that affected them. New York seemed a long way away. ‘You might as well eat your breakfast while it’s hot.’

  ‘Don’t you understand what I’m saying? The London stock market has crashed too. Last night’s prices are printed here and it looks as though I’ve lost a packet. I must get up and phone William Hawkes.’

  ‘He won’t be at his desk this early. Eat your breakfast.’

  ‘He’ll probably have been in his office all night.’ He swung away on his crutches to do it.

  Leonie picked up the newspaper and sat down to read.

  Steve soon came back and slumped on the bed. ‘You’re right, he’s not in his office.’ Leonie lifted his breakfast tray across his legs. He looked fraught. ‘What are we going to do now? As if we haven’t got enough trouble without this. I’ve probably lost the last few pounds Dad left me.’

  Leonie sighed. ‘I wouldn’t worry about losing all the money. You’ll still have the shares, they’ll just be worth less and you’ll still get the same dividends.’

  ‘I doubt that when shareholders are committing suicide in New York.’

  ‘Yes, but it says in the paper that those people were borrowing money to buy shares because the market was going up and up. They were greedy, expecting to make a fortune, but instead the market has collapsed and their shares are worth less than the amount they borrowed to buy them. You haven’t done anything like that.’

  ‘But they’ll certainly be worth less than they were last week.’

  ‘Yes.’ She frowned. ‘I couldn’t get to sleep last night. I spent the time pondering what I could do to earn some money. We aren’t going to have enough to live on.’

  He was irritable. ‘You don’t need to tell me that!’

  ‘I thought I might set myself up as a dressmaker.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’ He was full of suspicion. In Steve’s family the women didn’t work.

  ‘I could make clothes for other people – anybody who’ll pay me for doing it.’

  ‘I can’t let you do that.’ He was horrified.

  ‘I enjoy sewing, you know I do, and I’ve always made my own clothes and those for the children. It seems sensible to use the skills I have. I already have a large sewing room to work in and Aunt Felicity’s treadle machine, and there’s plenty more space in the house if I should need it.’

  ‘You’ll never earn enough to make it worthwhile.’ He screwed up his face, showing his abhorrence.

  ‘It’ll take me time to build it up but I love fashion and Aunt Felicity earned her living that way.’ Steve had rather looked down on her for doing that. ‘She taught me a lot about the trade. I think it’s my best bet.’

  ‘Leonie, nobody has much money to spend on clothes these days. You’ll hardly earn anything. I could try going back to work. George will find me a job in the office if I ask him.’

  Leonie turned to stare out through the big Victorian bay window and across the Mersey estuary. This morning it looked grey and misty but it was always busy with small coasters bustling up and down, each with thick black smoke pouring from its funnel. And of course there were the ferry boats crisscrossing the river, but unfortunately for Steve, the service no longer came to New Ferry.

  In 1922, the same severe gale that had blown down a tree in their garden had caused a steamer to run into the end of the pier. It did so much damage that the pier had had to be demolished and the ferry service closed, thus bringing to an end the pleasant and convenient way of travelling to Liverpool that Steve’s forebears had enjoyed.

  The parade of shops leading down to the pier lost much of their custom and the post office closed, turning the district into an increasingly shabby backwater. The middle-class merchants who had once occupied the neighbouring large houses had moved to other districts. Some of the houses had been split up and were now occupied by more than one family.

  That and the coming of the motor car had put out of business the commercial stable that had once plied for trade almost at their back gate. Steve had never owned a car or learned to drive. There was a good bus service into town but it was an eight- or ten-minute walk to the bus stop on the New Chester Road and Steve could not walk far. It was hardly practical for him to think of going back to work, especially as it was some years since he’d done so. Leonie was afraid he’d do again what he’d done so often in the past. He’d take on a job with good intentions but a morning would come when he’d feel unwell and just stay in bed.

  Leonie made up her mind. Whatever Steve thought of the idea, she intended to try dressmaking. She would advertise in the local paper, put cards in nearby newsagents’ windows and put a notice on the back gate inviting would-be customers to the door to ring the bell.

  She set about reorganising her sewing room and found it exciting to have something different in her life. She went out and bought a new oil heater because it would be cold to sew in there in the winter. They were reduced to one coal fire in the dining room which had come to be used as a general living room.

  Steve couldn’t eat his breakfast. He slid the tray over to Leonie’s side of the bed and stared out of the window at the view he’d known since childhood. Those had been sunlit years for him and his family, but the war had changed all that.

  He was fated. No matter how hard he tried, everything went wrong. Everybody gave up on him. Dad had decided George Courtney was a better man to run the firm, and now Leonie was going to take over as the family breadwinner. He felt reduced to nothing. He was superfluous here; he wished he’d been killed in France, at least they’d remember him as a hero.

  His eye was caught by a coaster chugging upriver, leaving a trail of smoke. The Mersey tide was full in and slapping against the wall of the Esplanade; he never tired of watching life out there. He craned his neck to see the two old ships moored permanently in the Sloyne, an area of deep water just to the right of their window.

  The Conway was a handsome nineteenth-century black and white wooden ship that had started life as HMS Nile and was now a school for training officers for the merchant navy. The other, the Indefatigable, was an iron ship, now a school for training the orphans of seamen for a life before the mast. Nothing much seemed to be happening on either of them at the moment.

  As Steve saw it, life was hell and set to get worse, they were going to be as poor as church mice. He should be thankful he still had Leonie. At least she still loved him, even though everybody else had given up on him.

  Over supper that evening, it brought him more pain to hear her talk of plans to add to the family income. He thought it highly unlikely she’d earn much, particularly as she’d started by buying a new oil heater.

  ‘That’s an unnecessary expense,’ he told her. ‘There’s an oil heater in the old servants’ quarters in the cellar that you could have used.’

  Milo looked up from his mutton chop. ‘Is there? If Mum doesn’t need it, I’d like to take it to the summer house. Can I have it, Pa?’

  ‘No,’ Steve retorted. ‘It’s too dangerous. You’ll set the place on fire and burn it down.’

  At twelve, Milo was growing up and becoming more independent. Steve had objected to his friends coming to the house, saying they were too noisy and he couldn’t get his rest. Some of the boys were scared of him because he would burst into the playroom and scold them when their noise level lifted high enough for him to hear it. Milo had argued with him, saying it was just good-humoured chatting. As a result, he’d asked his mother if he could take over the old summer house that nobody used now.

  ‘A good idea,’ she’d said. She’d thought they wouldn’t annoy Steve out there in the fresh air.

  Milo and his friends had begun to use it as a club room, but it did annoy Steve, he’d see the boys coming and going through the window of his study. ‘Th
ey disturb me,’ he’d complained.

  ‘Dad, can we move it further from the house?’

  ‘No, it’s far too old. It was my mother’s, your grandmother’s. She liked to sit out there on sunny days.’

  ‘It was meant to move, wasn’t it?’

  ‘No, only round to catch the sun.’

  ‘I could ask Duggie’s father to come and see if he thinks it’s possible to move it. If we set it against the wall by the back gate, Pa, you wouldn’t see or hear anything.’

  ‘You’ll never manage it,’ he said contemptuously and returned to his study.

  Leonie believed in letting children attempt what they thought they could achieve, and as Steve hadn’t actually forbidden it, when Milo had appealed to her for permission she said, ‘You can try if you wish, but you mustn’t churn up the garden and there must be nothing left on the lawn near the house.’

  Milo brought two adults, a father and an older brother to give their opinion. They thought moving it would be possible, the wood had been treated with ship’s varnish and was still in good condition, but they would need to take it apart into manageable pieces. Leonie persuaded Steve to give his permission and it took three weekends. Milo rounded up almost every boy in the neighbourhood to help and they all seemed to enjoy doing it.

  Somewhere along the line it was decided that the open front of the summer house should be turned against the eight-foot garden wall and bonded to it. There were windows on both sides, one of which was turned into a half-glassed door that became the entrance. The boys loved it. Milo reckoned it was better than the scout hut and it was marvellous to have the use of it for himself and his friends.

  They had played there throughout the summer and Steve had not been disturbed. The weather was getting cooler now and when Milo asked to use the oil heater, Leonie said to Steve, ‘I think we should allow it, providing Milo promises to abide by certain rules.’