Daughters of the Mersey (2 page)

L
EONIE AND STEVE HAD
been married just before the Great War began. At that time his parents had
been alive and so had his brother. Leonie felt full of love for Steve and knew he felt the same way about her. She expected marriage to transform her life. She’d looked forward to being a good wife and taking care of Steve and the home he’d rented for them. They’d both hoped that, in time, they’d have a family of their own.

Steve had been working for his father in the family antiques business which had been started by his great-grandfather in the last century. At the time, they’d been running an auction house and they owned four shops. The flagship of the business was in central Liverpool.

The family lived in some style on the Esplanade at New Ferry, in a spacious single-storey house they called Mersey Reach, built to their own specifications about the middle of Queen Victoria’s reign. It had been designed with many Georgian features, and had six bedrooms, a music room, a garden of two acres and accommodation for live-in staff in the cellar. It was in a very convenient position being within easy walking distance of the ferry terminus to Liverpool.

At the beginning of the war Steve hadn’t wanted to join up, he’d just wanted
to get on with his life and stay with Leonie, their future had looked rosy. He’d had to struggle with his conscience, believing he should do his bit but his father had persuaded him not to, saying he needed him in the business. When the avalanche of volunteers dried up in 1916, conscription came in and he’d had to go.

The war had marred everything and brought unexpected hardships. Leonie felt it had torn them apart. Left on her own, she gave up the tenancy of the house Steve had rented on their marriage and returned to live with her Aunt Felicity because she was now in her eighties and in failing health. There was little food to be had in the shops and it was rising rapidly in price. By the time Miles, their first child, was born in 1917, Steve was fighting in the trenches in France.

Miles was a Dransfield family name and Steve’s choice. He was a lovely strong baby with a lot of dark hair that had a reddish tinge. His face was round and rarely without a smile and he slept all night from an early age.

Leonie was kept busy caring for her baby and her aunt and looking after the house. Every evening when both were settled for the night she wrote to Steve, and his regular letters gave point to her day.

Then suddenly his letters stopped coming. Leonie tried to believe it was a problem with the post and that several would come together. The empty days stretched on until she was almost out of her mind with worry.

It was over a month before she heard that he’d been injured on the Somme and repatriated to a hospital near London. Her first feelings were of utter relief. He was alive and that was all that mattered.

When she went down to see him, she was shocked
to find him in pain and looking so ill. He had been caught in shellfire which had killed three men and injured two others. He had abdominal injuries caused by flying debris, as well as major injuries to his leg which had meant amputation.

His doctors told Leonie they saw no reason why he shouldn’t make a good recovery and cope with his disability. He spent almost a year in different hospitals before being sent to Woodley Grange, a mansion near Chester that had been converted to provide rehabilitation and convalescence for injured soldiers. He was near enough for Leonie to visit him often, and though his doctors continued to talk hopefully of his recovery, he’d begun to lose heart.

Steve’s parents, Edward and Isobel, were worried about him too and they did their best to help her. Edward hired a carriage to drive Leonie to and from the train station and Isobel liked to have charge of the baby. But only a few months later she began to complain of feeling unwell. Nothing seemed to help and eventually she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. It was a terrible shock to them all.

There were other problems too. The Dransfields had always employed a cook and a housemaid, but they both gave notice in the same month. The war had resulted in a dearth of domestic help as munitions factories were advertising for workers and paying higher wages for shorter hours. Leonie found them a woman who would come on three mornings a week to do the rough work but it wasn’t enough. Edward did what he could but Leonie had to go in every day to help with the cooking. With Miles and Aunt Felicity to take care of too, they were both finding it exhausting.

One day Edward and Isobel suggested she move
in with them and take over the running of the family home. It seemed the only logical course. Leonie was fond of her in-laws and they got on well together.

Great-Aunt Felicity was moved into a room with a lovely view over the river, but she survived there for only another six weeks. Leonie cared for her and sat with her when she was dying and found it emotionally exhausting. Steve’s mother was failing too. She spent the last months of her life when the weather was fine on a day bed in the summer house.

When Isobel passed away in her sleep one night, Leonie was grief-stricken and she and her father-in-law comforted each other as best they could.

Edward was coming up to retirement age but carried on working because a lot of his staff had joined up, but in truth, there was less work to do, the business was suffering.

Leonie longed for the end of the war but focused her mind on visiting Steve in Woodley Grange, her daily chores and caring for Edward and her little son. Miles was thriving, a happy little boy who brought great pleasure to them both and made them hope for a better future.

When the war ended, the War Office granted Steve a pension of £1. 10/- per week and Leonie brought him home to Mersey Reach to join the family. By the end of 1919 he’d recovered enough to return to work to become one of their buyers. It entailed a lot of travelling and attending auctions to buy good-quality antiques to stock their shops and both Leonie and Edward noticed he found the work tiring.

The only good thing that happened in the family in the aftermath of war was that Leonie gave birth to a daughter. They called
her June and she brought comfort to Steve and his father. She was a pretty baby with fair hair and big round blue eyes and both Edward and Steve loved to sit and hold her in their arms. Leonie blessed the fact that there was a family business to support them and devoted herself to the children and the running of the house.

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.

B
Y 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.