Mourning Doves (4 page)

It was obvious from Louise’s expression that she had no idea what was meant by leasehold, so Celia asked, ‘What exactly does that mean? I’ve always wondered.’

Mr Fairbanks picked up his cup of tea, and took a sip. ‘Well, you see, luv, nobody round these parts owns much land. Nearly all of it has belonged to the earl since time began. If you want to build on land round here – or farm it – you can persuade the earl to give you a long lease on it – these cottages had one for fifty years – and then you can build on it. However, at the end of the lease, you have to pay the earl to renew it; otherwise the land – and the buildings that you have built on it – revert to him, and he can rent them to somebody or pull them down.’ He put
his cup down neatly in its saucer, and then added, ‘And what’s more, you’ll probably find that Mr Billings ‘as been paying a ground rent to his lordship’s agent each year on your behalf.’

Louise asked, ‘Can we sell the cottage, if we want to?’

‘Oh, yes, Ma’am, if someone is prepared to buy the lease from you. But you’d have difficulty getting a good price for it – they’re a bit isolated – it’s a fair walk to Meols railway station, and your cottage has bin proper neglected, if I may say so. And in winter the wind comes in from the sea something awful. The gentleman that came to look at it brought Mr Parry, the estate agent from Hoylake, along with him – and that’s what he said. Neither house is worth a great deal.’

Louise felt a little comforted. At least Albert had considered selling the cottage, before he had condemned her to it.

For her part, Celia swallowed hard. Pay an earl for the right to live in a house that belonged to you, but you probably could not sell? What other money problems that they knew nothing about lurked amid the present turmoil of their lives? What other financial demands could they expect? She felt faint with fear, unreasonable fear that Cousin Albert might have deserted them, leaving them penniless. He had made it clear that the price of their Liverpool home would be used as the foundation of their income, and certainly not to buy another house. Once he had sold it for them, would he be honest and hand over the money? Celia felt sick with apprehension.

Her mother must have had similar vague fears, because she said rather desperately to her daughter, ‘Perhaps we should go to see Mr Billings now, Celia.’ She rose carefully, to hand her cup to their host, and thank him quite sweetly for his hospitality. He was a mere working man – but he was male and he knew things that she did not. Like Celia, Louise began to view him as a possible pillar of support,
like a good butler would have been, had she been fortunate enough to have one in her employ, instead of a giggling fool of a parlourmaid.

Eddie Fairbanks insisted on walking with the ladies down the sandy lane to Meols Station, and waiting with them until the steam train chugged in. He recommended that, instead of changing to the electric train at Birkenhead Park Station, they should get a cab from that station to Mr Billings’ office. ‘Being as it’s getting late, and his office is nearer to Park than it is to Birkenhead Central.’

They took his advice, and were fortunate in catching small, rotund Mr Billings just as he was putting on his overcoat ready to go home.

As the ladies were ushered in, after being announced by his fourteen-year-old office boy, he resignedly took off his bowler hat again and hung it on the coat stand, then went to sit at his desk. As the women entered, he half rose in his chair and smiled politely at them.

The office boy sullenly pulled out chairs for the forlorn couple. Because of their late arrival, he would be late home and his mother would scold him. He returned to the outer office to sit on his high stool and depressedly contemplate the beckoning spring sunshine which lit the untidy builder’s yard outside.

Louise had retired behind her mourning veil, and Mr Billings eyed her with some trepidation: widows could be very tiresome, particularly a real lady like this Gilmore woman; they never understood what you told them. Since she showed no indication of an ability to speak, he turned his eyes upon her companion, a thin sickly-looking woman,
dressed in mourning black. She must be the daughter. He smiled again.

‘Good afternoon, ladies. How can I help you?’ he inquired politely of Celia. Then, before Celia could respond, he added, ‘May I express my condolences at your sad loss. Very sad, indeed.’

There was a murmur of thanks from behind Louise’s veil, and Celia blinked back tears. They were not only tears because of the loss of her autocratic father, but tears for herself because she had little idea of how to deal with business matters – and Mr Billings represented a solid weight of them.

With what patience he could muster after a long, trying day, Mr Billings waited for one of them to speak, and, after a few moments, Celia nervously wetted her lips, and explained about the need to get the cottage at Meols into liveable shape.

While he considered this, Mr Billings brushed his moustache with one stout red finger and then twisted the waxed points at each end of it. He said slowly, ‘Oh, aye, it needs a bit of doing up if you’re going to live in it yourselves. It was rented for a good many years to a Miss Hornby after your auntie died; she was crippled and she never did aught about aught. When she died, Mr Gilmore saw no point in doing repairs on a place he didn’t use – and the rent wasn’t much. So I had the ground-floor windows boarded up – they being expensive to replace if they were broken by vandals. And that’s how it’s been for a couple of years now.’

He clasped his hands over his waistcoat and leaned back in his chair.

Celia told him about the broken bedroom window and asked if he could recommend a builder who could repair it quickly, and anything else that needed doing, like new floorboards in the hall bedroom.

He immediately wrote out on the back of one of his
business cards the name and address of a Hoylake man, Ben Aspen, who, he assured Celia, was as honest as the day. ‘I’ll get my own man to put a new windowpane in for you tomorrow – I got a handyman I keep to do small repairs. Later on, you can tell Ben Aspen what else you want doing.’

She was greatly relieved and thanked him, as she carefully put the card into her handbag.

‘Don’t mention it, Miss,’ he replied, as he turned to her mother, to address the daunting veil. ‘Seeing as how you’re here, Ma’am, I’d like to speak to you about your property in Birkenhead.’

Louise sniffed back her tears and lifted her veil sufficiently to apply a black handkerchief to mop up under it. ‘Yes?’ she fluttered nervously.

She jumped as Mr Billings shouted to his young clerk, still fidgeting in the outer office, ‘George, bring the Gilmore file.’

Muttering maledictions under his breath, the youngster got down the file and brought it in and laid it in front of Mr Billings. When he was dismissed he bowed obsequiously to the ladies as he passed them.

They ignored him.

‘Now, let me see.’ Mr Billings rustled through an inordinate number of pieces of paper, while Celia watched anxiously.

‘Humph.’ He leaned back in his chair again, and addressed Louise. ‘Now, yesterday afternoon a Mr Albert Gilmore come in. Said he was your trustee – when he said it, I thought for a second that you was passed on as well as Mr Gilmore. Anyway, he says that I’m to send the cheque for your rents to him, like I always sent them to Mr Timothy Gilmore – prompt each quarter day.’

Celia drew in her breath sharply, and opened her mouth to protest, but, seeing her expression, Mr Billings continued, ‘Yes, Miss. That was my reaction, too. Them houses
belong to you, Mrs Gilmore – according to my notes, they’re your dowry, and, therefore, they aren’t part of Mr Gilmore’s estate; and so I tell him – and he was really put out. But I said to him as it is one thing to send the rents to your hubby, Ma’am, for which I have had your written permission these many years – in fact, my father had it before me – but another to hand them over to a stranger I don’t know.’

He straightened up and looked at Louise, rightly proud of his personal rectitude.

Both Louise and Celia gasped at this information, and Celia felt sick, because it tended to confirm her poor opinion of Cousin Albert. It did not occur to her that Albert merely wanted to check that Mr Billings handed over the correct sum each month.

Louise was so shaken that she actually threw back her veil, to reveal a plump, blotched face, which might have still been pretty in happier circumstances. ‘But he has no right,’ she faltered.

‘Precisely, Ma’am.’

Mr Billings smiled knowingly at her. ‘But it so happened, Ma’am, that I was a trifle late making up me books this quarter and didn’t do your account till this morning. One tenant, Mrs Halloran, being late with her rent – she owed five shillings – I held back to give her a chance to get up to date before I reported to Mr Gilmore that she was in arrears. I read your sad news in the obituary column, Ma’am – and I’m proper sorry about it, Ma’am – so I held the cheque back until I heard from you. I’d have written to you in a few days, if you hadn’t come in.’

He fumbled in his waistcoat pocket and brought out a key ring. Then, selecting a key, he got up and went to a small safe at the back of the room. He took out an envelope and handed it to Louise.

‘There you are, Ma’am. A cheque for three months’ rents in total. Mrs H. paid up, and there was no repairs this
quarter – it’s less me commission, of course. All rents up to and including last Saturday, payable to you today, Lady Day, as per usual, Ma’am.’

Louise looked up at him with real gratitude. She was not sure how to cash a cheque, but she did know that it represented welcome money. In her cash box at home, she had a month’s housekeeping in five-pound notes, which Timothy had given her, as he usually did on the first of each month; beyond that she had no idea what she was supposed to do about money. Behind her expressions of woe a deeper fear of destitution had haunted her as well as Celia.

Her thanks were echoed by Celia, who hastily added that they would, as soon as the cottage was habitable, be leaving their home in West Derby, Liverpool – it was already up for sale – and that she or her mother would let him know, before the next quarter day, which would be Midsummer’s Day, exactly where he should send the next cheque.

He was a kindly man, and, as he gently clasped Louise’s hand when they took their departure, he felt some pity for her. Women were so helpless without menfolk – and there were so many of them bereaved by the war. They had the brains of chickens – and it appeared to him that these two already might have a fox in the coop.

He said impulsively, ‘If I can be of help, dear ladies, don’t hesitate to call on me.’

Though Louise only nodded acceptance of this offer, Celia, whose stomach had been clenched with fear ever since her father’s clerk had come running up the front steps with the terrible news of Timothy’s sudden death, felt herself relax a little. She longed to put her head on the little man’s stout shoulder and weep out her terror at being so alone. Instead, she held out her hand a little primly to have it shaken by him and apologised for keeping him late at his office.

Exactly how does one cash a cheque, she worried inwardly, and she wished passionately that Paul and Edna were in England to advise her.

They were exhausted by the time they returned home, and were further alarmed by the notice hooked on to their front gate. It announced that This Desirable Property was For Sale. The estate agent, in response to Cousin Albert’s instructions that he wanted a quick sale, had not wasted any time.

Louise immediately broke into loud cries of distress, and it was with difficulty that Celia and Dorothy, the house-parlourmaid, got her into the sitting room. The pretty, formal room, ordinarily used for teas and at homes, still smelled faintly of hyacinths and lilies, despite having been carefully aired after the funeral, and Celia felt slightly sick from it.

While Dorothy fled upstairs to her mistress’s bedroom to get a fresh container of smelling salts, Celia laid Louise on the settee. She carefully removed her bonnet and put cushions under her head.

Then she kneeled down by her and curved her arm round her. ‘Try not to cry, Mother. Everything will be all right in the end. Please, Mother.’

Louise shrieked at her, ‘Nothing’s going to bring your father back – or my boys! Nothing! Nothing!’ She turned her back on Celia, and continued to wail loudly. ‘My boys! My boys!’

‘She’d be better in bed, Miss.’

Startled, Celia looked up. Winnie, the cook, had heard the impassioned cries, and had run up from her basement
kitchen to see what was happening. Now, she leaned over the two women, her pasty face full of compassion.

‘This isn’t the right room to have her in, Miss. What with the Master having been laid out here, like.’

Celia herself, frightened by the faint odour of death, would have been thankful to run upstairs to her own bedroom, shut herself in and have a good cry. Instead, she rose heavily to her feet.

‘You’re quite right, Winnie. Will you help me get her upstairs?’

‘For sure, Miss.’ She turned towards a breathless Dorothy, who dumbly held out the smelling salts to her.

Winnie took the salts and said above the sound of Louise’s cries, ‘Now, our Dorothy, you go and fill a hot water bottle and put it in the Mistress’s bed. And put her nightgown on top of it to warm.’

Dorothy’s face looked almost rabbitlike as her nose quivered with apprehension. She turned to obey the instructions, but paused when the cook said sharply, ‘And you’d better put a fire up there. It’s chilly. You can take a shovelful of hot coals from me kitchen fire to get it started quick.’

The maid nodded, took a big breath as if she were about to run a marathon, and shot away down the stairs to fetch the hot water bottle and the coals.

As Celia and Winnie half carried Louise up the wide staircase with its newel post crowned by a finely carved hawk, the widow’s cries became heavy, heart-rending sobs.

‘She’ll feel better after this,’ Winnie assured Celia. ‘A good cry gets it out of you.’

Dorothy stood at the bottom of the staircase, hot water bottle under one arm, in her hands a big shovel full of glowing coals, and waited for the other women to reach the top. The shovel was heavy and she dreaded setting the stair carpet alight by dropping a burning coal on it.

Have a good cry? And what had she in her fancy house
to cry about? Her old man had probably left her thousands, and not much love lost between them. And here she was howling her head off and the house up for sale, and never a word to her maids as to what was happening. Proper cruel, she was.

Would she turn Winnie and Ethel and herself off as soon as the house was sold? And, if not, where would they be going to live?

As her coals cooled, Dorothy’s temper grew. She plodded up the stairs after the other women, handed the hot water bottle to Winnie, and then skilfully built the bedroom fire, while Winnie and Celia partially undressed the sobbing Louise, removed her corsets and eased her huge Victorian nightgown over her head.

Behind the blank expression on Dorothy’s pinched, thin face, anger seethed. Winnie must ask the Mistress what was to happen to them. She must! If they had to find new situations, they should start now. Although there was a demand for good domestic help, the big mansions in the country were being closed down in favour of London apartments, and their domestic staffs dismissed; in consequence, a lot of competition faced a middle-aged house-parlourmaid like herself. And it was always difficult to find a considerate employer. She sighed. She had not felt that Timothy and Louise were particularly considerate, but she had become accustomed to them. Ethel, the maid-of-all-work, was young enough to try for a factory job, but she herself was in her forties – getting really old – and Winnie must be nearing fifty – it would be hard for her to get another job of any kind.

She took fresh lumps of coal from the fireside coal hod and laid them on top of those she had brought up. She ensured that they had caught and that the fire was beginning to blaze and then swept the hearth. Then she got slowly to her feet, and picked up the shovel.

As she contemplated her future, she began to feel sick. She berated herself that she had not saved some of the
good wages she had earned in an ordnance factory during the war years. She had spent like a king until the factory closed down at the end of the war, and then she had come to work as a house-parlourmaid for the Gilmores, because domestic work was all she was skilled at.

She turned from the fireplace and paused to stare at the scene before her.

Seated on the side of the bed beside her mother, Celia held a small glass of brandy to Louise’s lips and encouraged her to sip it between sobs. Winnie had folded back the bedclothes ready for the sufferer to lie down.

Nice woman, Miss Celia – but that useless, you’d never believe it. No spirit. Never had any fun, the Master being so difficult to please, especially so, Winnie said, since he lost his son with that Lord Kitchener, and then Mr Tom in France, poor lad.

Her own father had been a bit of a cross, she remembered, and not past beating her if she did something he didn’t like – but when he had work, even if he was fair wore out by the end of the day, he could make the family laugh and they’d have a neighbour or two in and do some singing, with a drop of ale to drink by the fire. Old Gilmore had done nothing but complain, complain – and order you around as if you were muck.

She wondered if Celia’s sister, Edna, was like her. She had never seen her, but she had heard she was a real beauty, and at least, it seemed, she had had enough sense to get out from under her old man by getting married.

Winnie impatiently glanced back over her shoulder and said, ‘Get downstairs, Dot, and look to the soup for me. Give it a stir. I’ll be down in a minute.’

Dorothy nodded, and went sulkily down to the basement kitchen, carrying her shovel carefully so that she did not drop a bit of ash on the stair carpet, which, every morning, she had to brush, from cellar to attic.

Louise finally cried herself to sleep, and an exhausted Celia was persuaded by Winnie to put her feet up on the old chaise longue in the breakfast room at the back of the house, while the cook put together a dinner tray for her.

‘The Mistress didn’t tell me what to make for dinner, so I made this nice thick soup, but I’ve got some cold beef, if you feel like something more. And the bread come out of the oven only a couple of hours ago.’

Celia nodded wearily, and said that the soup sounded lovely. When it was brought to her, she drank it slowly while Winnie stood and watched her anxiously.

When Celia’s bowl was finally empty, Winnie removed it, and then hesitantly inquired if Celia could tell her what was going to happen to them all. ‘Seeing the For Sale sign was a proper shock, Miss,’ she explained. ‘And Dorothy and Ethel is all upset. They’re asking me what they should do.’

‘You should all start looking for new situations,’ Celia answered her frankly, though she did her best to hide her own sense of despair. ‘I know Mother will be glad to keep all of you on for a week or two, while we sort out the house, and decide what to take with us – we are going to live in a cottage in Meols, which Mother owns.’ She paused, and then said rather helplessly, ‘We have no choice but to sell this place quickly, Winnie. And we shan’t be able to afford servants.’ She looked up at the shocked elder woman. ‘I shall, personally, miss you terribly, Winnie, after all the years you’ve been with us, especially through the war.’

Winnie took a big breath, as she tried to control her own sense of panic. She inquired, ‘Things must be very bad, Miss?’

‘In a way they are, Winnie, though not as bad as they might be. Mother’s lucky that my Aunt Felicity left her this cottage by the sea.’ She sighed and fiddled with the fringe of the woollen shawl that Winnie had put across her
legs to keep them warm. Then she said in explanation, ‘Father had heavy business debts. We can’t afford a servant – I’m hoping that we shall be able to have a daily cleaning woman – because I don’t think I shall be very good at keeping house!’

She smiled faintly at the stricken cook, who, despite her own sense of despair, noted that poor Miss Celia was taking it for granted that she would have to run the house – and she probably would have to. And she so small and sickly-looking.

‘How long do you think we’ve got, Miss?’

‘Well, I haven’t consulted Mother yet. Mr Albert Gilmore, who was here for the funeral, told us that the estate agent felt he would have no trouble selling this house. When it is sold, I suppose that we shall have to set a final date when we have to leave it – to suit the new owner. But we will have to let you go very soon.’ She looked up imploringly at her old friend, as if to ask forgiveness.

Winnie’s stout chest heaved, but she replied woodenly, ‘I understand, Miss.’

‘The other house has to have a few essential repairs done – and we have to get it cleaned – it’s filthy at present.’ She bit her lower lip, and then added quickly, ‘I think that Mother can pay you all for this week – and, I hope, for another week. Tomorrow I’ll talk to her, and we’ll try to make a timetable of some sort, to help you.’

‘It’s good of you to be so honest with me, Miss. Can I tell the others?’

‘Of course. There is so little time. You should all start looking for other situations immediately.’ She stopped to consider the appalling upheaval facing her, and then added heavily, ‘I’ll ask Mother to write references for you tomorrow – and if one of you wants to go for an interview on a day other than your half-day, will you arrange it as best you can between yourselves?’

‘We will, Miss. Thank you, Miss.’

Winnie bent and picked up the tray.

To Celia, her perceptions heightened by her own fears, the cook looked suddenly old as she turned slowly and went out of the room. She watched Winnie quietly close the door after her, and then she began to shake helplessly.

She clasped her arms tightly round her breast, and rolled herself over, so that her face was buried in the feather cushions which had propped her up. She began to sweat and her teeth chattered uncontrollably, as her fear of the scary world she was having to face and her sense of having betrayed an old friend overwhelmed her.

‘Oh, God,’ she whispered in desperation. ‘What’s going to happen to us? Heaven help us.’

She rolled again, to curl herself up in sheer terror into a tight foetal ball.

With what was left of her sanity she begged to die.

But she knew from experience of these attacks of panic that death did not oblige so easily. So in the unnatural silence of the home she was about to lose, she lay as still as she could, and prayed incoherently for release from the blind fear that engulfed her.

After a little while, her breathing became more normal, and she began to mutter very slowly, as she always did, ‘ “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”’ She hoped that, if she could concentrate well enough to recite the psalm right through to the end and was comforted by King David’s immortal words, the seizure would ease.

It had always worked before when she was terrified, even when she was a child and had first realised that she was being brought up differently from her sister.

Because of her parents’ special interest in Edna’s well-being, she had always believed that their neglect of herself indicated that there must be something wrong with her. Had she some deficiency in her which they were hiding from her? Something weird which would one day spring out and send her mad – or, at least, make her a useless
invalid, like a neighbour’s daughter who had been confined for years to a wheelchair by an attack of infantile paralysis?

This childhood dread, implanted by careless, selfish parents, had fed upon itself until, in her confused, early teenage years, it became an overwhelming terror, which periodically swept over her like some mighty wave whenever she felt threatened.

Frightened themselves by these seizures, her parents had firmly put them down to that popular female complaint, hysteria. It was the height of vulgarity, an effort to draw attention to herself, they said. They had slapped and beaten her at such times, then locked her in her bedroom, until she saw sense, as they put it.

The panic would eventually wear itself out, and, exhausted, she would drag herself out of her bed and knock on her bedroom door to plead tearfully to be let out. She invariably promised that it would not happen again, but, sooner or later, it invariably did.

Now, in adulthood, she had slowly realised that she was probably quite normal. But Church and custom reinforced her parents’ declaration that it was her duty as a good churchwoman and devoted daughter to care for them when they grew old. They had often made it clear to her that she was too stupid to be capable of doing anything else.