Mourning Doves (13 page)

Edna hurried back from the bathroom, selected a black gown, shook it out and tutted that it needed pressing. She said to Celia, ‘You might ask the maid to press the rest before they are hung up.’

With sudden spirit, Celia replied, ‘You will have to do them yourself. Dorothy is coming out to the cottage with me tomorrow morning, to continue the cleaning of it. I have to meet the plumber there – and the building contractor’s clerk.’ She put down a winter coat, two umbrellas, a
parasol and two pairs of walking boots, and added, ‘That’s everything, I think. I’m going to get washed.’ And she went out quickly, before Edna could protest, to scrub her face, while she trembled with defiance.

Dinner was eaten in painful silence. Louise played glumly with the food on her plate. Edna did courteously praise the apple pie to Dorothy, and Dorothy conveyed the information to a depressed Winnie. Otherwise, almost nothing except the barest politenesses passed between them. Celia kept quiet, afraid that if she spoke, her resentment of the other two would show, and bring down upon her from her mother the usual accusations of ingratitude or bad temper.

After they had finished, they went in silent procession into the sitting room to sit by the fire and drink their coffee which Dorothy brought in on a tray.

Edna seated herself gracefully in her father’s chair and, after the parlourmaid had left the room, she opened a little black evening purse, which she carried dangling on her wrist. She took out a pretty silver case and a matching silver tube.

As she opened the case, took out a cigarette and fitted it into the silver holder, she asked, ‘Do you mind if I smoke, Mama?’

Aroused from her melancholic contemplation of a future without Timothy, Louise stared at her daughter in shocked disgust.

‘Edna! You don’t mean to say that you smoke?’

‘I do, Mama. The doctor in Salvador recommended it when I was so upset at the loss of Rosemary. He said it would soothe my nerves – and it does.’

‘The doctor must have been mad! No lady would surely ever smoke!’

‘Tush, Mama. A lot of women do nowadays, especially Portuguese and Spanish ladies. I couldn’t do without my
cigarettes now.’ She waved the cigarette holder with its unlit cigarette around, as if to indicate a big crowd of female smokers.

‘I will not allow a woman to smoke in my house!’ exclaimed an outraged Louise. ‘I think it’s awful. Even your dear father never smoked here in my sitting room. He smoked in the library or in the garden.’

Celia was both astounded and intrigued by the disagreement. How daring of Edna to do such a thing! With her hands folded neatly in her lap, she forgot her own woes and watched, fascinated.

Edna was nonplussed. Her mother had rarely refused her anything, and, since her Portuguese friends smoked, as did her mother-in-law, she was unprepared for the objection. She had forgotten that the upper classes in the north of England were much more conservative than those in the south.

Edna’s lips were trembling. ‘I cannot give it up, Mama. It would be quite impossible. I had my last cigarette in the train, and I badly need to smoke now.’

‘Then you should confine such an unsociable activity to the garden or your bedroom.’ Louise sounded absolutely frigid.

‘Very well, Mama.’ Edna rose, picked up her coffee cup, and left the room, a picture of offended dignity.

‘This is horrible, Celia. Simply horrible.’ Louise pulled her handkerchief out of her sleeve, and touched her eyes with it. ‘I never dreamed of a daughter of mine smoking! I hope you never indulge in such a shameful practice.’

Celia swallowed. She did not really know what to say. She knew that Phyllis secretly smoked. ‘Er – um, Mama. I don’t think I would ever want to,’ she finally said quite honestly, ‘though it is becoming quite common.’

‘I would never deny my daughter a home, but I must say I have always disapproved of women smoking. I cannot think what I shall do about it if she stays with us.’

‘You could insist that she does the same as Papa did – smoke in the library or in the garden.’

Louise sniffed in disdain. She heaved a great shuddering sigh. ‘I don’t know, Celia. I really don’t know. Our lives are all upside down, and I don’t know what to deal with first.’

‘I know, Mama. Just don’t worry. Try to rest a lot tomorrow. It will help you,’ Celia soothed. For a moment she forgot a lifetime of oppression and saw her mother as yet another casualty of the war and of pure bad luck. She felt sorry for the arrogant, selfish woman, suddenly brought low by circumstances which were not her fault. ‘You should go to bed now,’ she continued. ‘I’ll ask Dorothy to put a hot water bottle in for you.’

Long before either Louise or Edna had stirred from their beds, Celia and Dorothy had left for Meols. This time, Dorothy carried only a shopping basket containing newspapers and a bottle of vinegar for cleaning the windows. As well as her handbag, Celia carried a neat brown paper parcel tied with string, which Winnie had pressed into her hand, saying, ‘It’s a lunch for you and Dorothy, Miss.’ Dear faithful Winnie, she thought, and she smiled.

The news that Dorothy had given about Mr Fairbanks’ water supply had finally lifted her spirits a little, and this morning, after a good night’s sleep, she felt much more optimistic about her new home. Perhaps she could persuade her mother and Edna to share the domestic work, once they were in the cottage.

As they sat in the train, Dorothy, usually so silent, became quite talkative. She declared that, yesterday, Mr Fairbanks had been real nice. He had let her use his loo, as well as giving her hot water for her cleaning.

‘At the back of his living-room fireplace, he says, he’s got a hot-water tank just like we’ve got in the kitchen of your West Derby house. Hot water made everything easy for me, it did.

‘And the sweep was a nice young man. Didn’t make too much mess. He left his bill on the mantel shelf for you.’ With her red, ungloved hands in her lap, she considered her young mistress, and then added, ‘I promised as we
would pay today. To tell truth, Miss, I think he’s waiting on the money. He’s only just set up after coming home from hospital. He says it’s proper hard to get started again in civvy street – but his dad were a sweep, so at least he’s got a trade.’

Celia promised to go into Hoylake and pay the sweep as soon as she had seen Miss Aspen and the plumber.

The fact that even a maid needed hot water to do her work properly had escaped Celia, and she was thankful for Eddie Fairbanks’ consideration.

Feeling relaxed in the unusual situation in which she found herself, Dorothy felt able to advise Celia to order in from Hoylake a couple of hundredweight of coal and some wood chips, so that fires could be lit in the newly cleaned fireplaces. ‘To dry the place out, like. Yesterday, it got proper cold what with the wind blowing in from the sea – and the damp.’

Celia agreed, and added a note to her list to find a coal merchant.

As they approached the cottage, they saw that Eddie was trimming his hedge. On seeing them struggling down the sandy lane, he laid his shears on the top of the hedge and came to relieve Dorothy of the basket. She simpered at him, as she handed it over to him. Real nice manners Mr Fairbanks had.

When he greeted Celia, he seemed to her to be an old friend, and she told him without a hint of shyness what Dorothy and she were going to do that day.

‘I’ll get me ladder and clean the outsides of the windows for you,’ he offered. ‘It’ll be better than trying to reach them from the inside.’

Dorothy did not wait for Celia to answer. She accepted immediately. Then she turned to Celia and said, ‘Sash windows, like your mam has got, I can manage, because I can sit on the windowsill and lower the window over me knees to hold me, so I don’t fall. These here is casements
– they open outwards. Even if I chanced a fall, I couldn’t get at them properly.’

Eddie Fairbanks, who had a daughter in service and knew the hazards of window-cleaning, said firmly that the last thing he wanted was someone around with a broken back. The women laughed, as they unlocked and went into the cottage.

‘It looks so much better!’ exclaimed Celia.

Dorothy beamed with pride. ‘This is a first go. You wait till you’ve had it painted. It’ll look real nice.’

Her words were echoed by Betty Aspen, who arrived soon afterwards and went slowly over the little building. Celia held the other end of her tape measure, as she carefully measured for two new boards for the floor of the small bedroom and suggested a new windowsill and new plaster below it, because the rain had probably got in between the brick and the plaster. She strongly recommended new window frames for the back windows. ‘They’re rotten,’ she said, ‘and beginning to let in the rain. Probably because they face the prevailing wind and have been soaked more often.’

When they entered the kitchen, she looked with mock horror at the heavily rusted old range.

‘Miss Gilmore,’ she exclaimed. ‘While you have workmen on the premises, have it removed. It will give you much more wall space. Later on, you might be able to have a gas stove installed.’

Celia’s first thought was of how much it would cost. She dithered.

As if reading her thoughts, Betty urged, ‘It could be done quite economically – you’ll never manage to get it clean and shiny again. It looks as if it has not been used for years and years.’

With visions of spending hours cleaning weighed against being indebted to Aspens’ for months, Celia plunged, and ordered, a little breathlessly, ‘Yes, please take it out.’

Betty knew Eddie Fairbanks, and, next, without hesitation, she asked if she could borrow his ladder. To Celia’s astonishment, while Eddie held it for her, she climbed it fearlessly, her black skirt swinging round the calves of her plump legs, as she examined the roof, its gutters and downpipes and the chimneys. She announced, as she came down, after taking a final look at the back half of the roof, that someone had repaired the latter not too long before. ‘And they did the gutters and downpipes. The chimney could do with repointing, but it’s not too bad.’

‘It would be Mr Billings, the agent, who saw to the roof, I think,’ Celia told her. She felt glad that Mr Billings had, to a degree, watched over the fabric of the cottage for her mother. It reinforced the idea that he was a man of integrity.

Betty ploughed through overgrown bushes which had taken over the little flowerbed which ran along the walls of the house, to look at something she called the damp courses, and said that they, too, had been kept clear. Flushed and panting, she emerged near the back door.

As she paused to catch her breath, she looked down the length of the garden and spotted the outside lavatory. She sniffed disparagingly at it. ‘Your biggest problem is that – and the water supply,’ she announced. ‘The rest is easy.’

Eddie was standing patiently near them, in case Betty wanted the ladder again, and he interjected with the information that he had his water from the mains and a good flush lavatory outside his back door. ‘The earl got it done for me before I moved in,’ he said proudly.

‘A plumber’s coming to look at the pump this morning,’ Celia told them. ‘I hope he can do the same for us.’

‘Me dad could probably do that for you – and give you a better price,’ Betty said promptly, as she took out a notebook and pencil and began to add to the notes she
had made of her measurements. ‘It pays to get more than one price.’

Celia saw the sense of this. In fact, later on, she often recounted the story of Betty’s intrepidness at scaling the ladder, and said that Betty had, that very morning, taught her some of the basic principles of business.

While Eddie repositioned his ladder in order to clean the upstairs windows, and Dorothy came to the back door to tell him that she had the necessary paper, rags and vinegar to do the job, Celia was further surprised when Betty went outside the front gate and began to hunt through the foot-high grass and the straggling hedge.

She pulled out a clump of grass, and said with satisfaction, ‘There it is.’

Celia squatted down by her, and watched as she cleared earth and roots from round a brass, embossed disc, like a small lid set in a ring of some other metal. ‘You’ve got a water supply this far, anyway,’ she said triumphantly. ‘They’ll know at the Town Hall if there’s any piping into the house. I’m surprised whoever lived here wasn’t connected at the same time as Mr Fairbanks was.’

‘Maybe Aunt Felicity couldn’t afford it – or Father wouldn’t do it for tenants – he never wanted this house – said it was a nuisance,’ Celia explained. ‘But Mother can be very wooden when she wants to be, and she wanted it kept in the family. I can remember vaguely Father talking about selling it.’

‘Get the water laid on,’ advised Betty. She pointed to one of the upstairs windows. ‘If you were prepared to sacrifice the back bedroom above the kitchen, Dad could probably put a bathroom and lavatory in it for you. A bathroom would add to the value of the house.’ She turned to Eddie Fairbanks and inquired, ‘Do you have a cesspool – or are you connected to the main drains somehow?’

‘Cesspool. The earl had it dug when the lavatory were put in.’

‘So the cesspool belongs to the earl?’

‘Oh, aye. It will, no doubt, since he owns the land. He had it cleaned out recently.’

‘So Mrs Gilmore would need to have her own dug?’

‘Well, a flush lavatory outside, like mine, still has to be connected up to something!’ Eddie Fairbanks took off his cap and scratched his head, while he considered this fact. Then he said doubtfully, ‘You could ask the earl’s agent if Mrs Gilmore’s drains could be connected to it for the time being. There’s a rumour in the village that some new houses are to be built just by; probably they will be connected with the main drains at the end of the lane – and if that’s true, you and the earl could ask that these houses be connected at the same time. In fact, the Town Hall may insist on the connection to a drain. They don’t believe in cesspools nowadays.’

‘I’ll find out from the Town Hall about the drainage and the water for you,’ Betty promised.

‘Would a loo and bathroom cost very much?’

‘It wouldn’t be cheap.’ Celia’s face fell, and Betty said cautiously. ‘Me dad might be willing for you to pay by instalments – like monthly, and he might have secondhand bathroom fitments in stock which are still good – that would cut the cost a lot.’

Celia thought about this for a moment, as they walked towards the front door, and then she said, ‘Once we sell our big Liverpool house, Mama should be able to pay all of the bill. I’ll talk to Father’s trustee about it.’

Betty nodded, and then Celia asked her, ‘Would he mind telling me what it would cost for a bathroom, separate from the general repairs, even if we didn’t have the work done?’

‘He wouldn’t mind. You don’t get all the jobs you tender for. He’d give you two prices, if you like. One for a sink
and taps and connections in the kitchen and an outside loo, and one for a complete bathroom with a loo in the house – and the kitchen taps the same.’ She smiled, and added, ‘And removing the range!’

Though she was worried at the possible cost, Celia was enchanted. ‘Ask him, please,’ she breathed. Then she inquired, ‘Would you mind, since I have a plumber coming, if I got a price from him, too?’

‘No. You would be accepting the advice I gave you just now!’ She laughed, and Celia, finding her enthusiasm infectious, laughed as she had not done for weeks.

Delighted with themselves, they did some extra measurements and talked about painting the interior economically. Then, as Betty put her notebook back into her big black handbag, Celia told her about her mother’s fine early nineteenth-century furniture – and that some of the pieces were too large to go into the cottage. ‘Anyway, we have far too much of it – and china and curtains.’

‘Will you sell it?’

‘We’ll have to. At first, I suggested to Mother that we get it auctioned, and she was quite miserable. Basically, I think both of us felt that we would not get good prices for it.’ Celia paused to look at Betty’s alert, friendly face, and then, gaining confidence, she plunged into a description of an idea she had had when visiting the Aspens’ building yard.

‘You remember, when I came to see you yesterday, you were cleaning out a kind of barn – where the car had been stored?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ Betty sounded surprised.

‘I was wondering – I thought it might be easier for Mother, if we stored most of the furniture, so that she had a chance to consider what would look best in her new home – we need to vacate our present house fairly soon. I was thinking that we could sell piece by piece what we did not want and get a better price for it.’

Betty grinned, ‘And you’d like to put it in our barn?’

‘Yes. Do you think that Mr Aspen would rent it? I don’t think I can pay very much.’

‘I don’t think he’s any immediate plans to use it, to be honest. It was a matter of cashing in on the car more than anything.’ The smile left her face, as, in her turn, she confided, ‘Father thought that now is the time to sell it, while there’s a possible market and it’s still in good shape. He wants me to have the money as a nest egg, seeing as my hubby built it.’

She looked, for a moment, so desolate, that Celia instinctively put her arm round her shoulder to comfort her. ‘Never mind,’ she said pointlessly.

Betty bit her lip, and then, steadying herself, said, ‘I’m so sorry. It comes over me at times.’

Celia smiled and, as if she had known her for years, hugged her gently. ‘Of course it does. I do understand.’

‘I’ll ask me dad for you.’

‘Thank you. I haven’t talked to Mother yet, because my sister arrived from South America yesterday, and there has not been much opportunity. I believe that the idea would be agreeable to her.’

Betty had gathered up her courage again and had begun to move towards the lane, so Celia let her arm drop. ‘And now I think of it, my sister may have stuff coming from Salvador that she may want to store, too.’