Queen of the Mersey (3 page)

Across the road, in number twenty-two, Roddy Oliver sat on the sofa with his legs stretched out so Laura could nurse his heavily bandaged ankle. His thin, handsome face looked terribly worn, she thought compassionately, and the palms of his hands had been badly grazed as he slid down the ladder. Hester, more tired than usual after her activities that afternoon, had been put to bed hours ago.

‘Does it still hurt, darling?’ she asked.

‘It throbs a bit, that’s all,’ he said stoutly.

He was enjoying being made a fuss of for a change. For a long time now, he’d been terribly brave, burdened by far too much responsibility for someone so young, yet never once complaining.

When they had first run away together, they’d had money. Roddy had been left five hundred pounds by his grandfather. The first thing he did was buy Laura a wedding ring. From then on, she had handled the money carefully, or so she’d thought at the time. They’d rented a flat in Islington, thinking that they were slumming it rather, and she’d bought the cheapest food. Hester had been born in a private nursing home, Laura unaware that she could have gone into a maternity hospital, which would have been considerably cheaper. Baby clothes were bought from an inexpensive High Street shop.

In retrospect, the flat had been a palace compared to the places they’d lived since. The ‘cheap’ food – lamb and pork chops, spare ribs – had become nothing but fond memories. The only meat they ate these days were sausages, mincemeat and streaky bacon.

Still, they’d thought they were managing wonderfully. Straight away, Roddy had got a job as a messenger with a bank – they were sensible enough to realise the money wouldn’t last for ever. It was a job with prospects. He decided to forget about architecture and take an accountancy course at night school, make banking his career, but had been sacked within a fortnight.

‘I thought you were too good to be true,’ the manager had snarled halfway through his second week.

‘I said to him, “What do you mean?”’ Roddy told Laura that night, visibly shaken. ‘Apparently, he wrote to St Jude’s for a reference and they said I’d left, “under a cloud”.’

‘Oh, dear!’ Laura said inadequately.

‘It means there’s no use applying for another job where they’ll want a reference.’

‘Oh, dear!’ she said again. ‘What will we do now?’ What she really meant was, ‘What will you do?’ because she was barely sixteen, five months pregnant, terrified out of her wits, and unable to do anything other than ineffectually keep house.

‘I’ll just have to find a job where they don’t care about references,’ Roddy said grimly. Almost a year older, he had matured with astonishing swiftness over the last few months.

He’d gone to work in a menswear shop where the wages were so poor they wouldn’t even pay the rent, let alone buy food. They moved to a smaller flat, then an even smaller one, just one large room. By then, Hester had been born. She was an irascible baby, always crying. The nappies had to be washed in the communal kitchen and there was nowhere for them to dry.

It was about this time, Laura remembered, as she sat on the sofa in Glover Street nursing Roddy’s ankle, that he’d suggested she went home to her father.

‘Do you want me to go home?’ she’d asked, her heart in her mouth.

‘Lord, no!’ He shuddered. ‘I love you so much, I can’t imagine life without you but, Lo, darling, the five hundred pounds has virtually gone. At least your father would provide a roof over your head. You and Hester would be warm and have enough to eat.’

‘My father would never accept Hester. She’d have to be farmed out, adopted. I’d never see her again, and I’d never see you, either. He wouldn’t allow you near the house, and your family wouldn’t allow me near yours.’ Laura managed a smile.

‘We’re outcasts.’

‘Then we’ll have to stay outcasts.’ He looked at her ruefully. ‘I wish I weren’t so hopeless, though. And helpless. At St Jude’s, it was taken for granted we’d give orders when we grew up, not take them. We weren’t taught to do anything sensible. I can’t even knock a nail in straight.’

The mention of nails reminded her that he’d given in his notice at the shop and was starting work on a building site on Monday. He’d been told it was the best paid unskilled work, if not exactly regular. She could tell he was dreading it.

Laura had flung her arms around his neck. ‘You’re anything but helpless and hopeless. You’re the most capable man I know and I’ll love you till the day I die.’

The building site was hard, back-breaking toil and, at first, he came back to their squalid room full of cuts and bruises. The other labourers, mainly huge, fiercesome Irishmen, made fun of the fine-featured, graceful young man who’d been to public school and spoke with a cutglass accent but, as time passed, they began to admire his tenacity and willingness to work as hard as they did, sometimes seven days a week. They became good friends, or ‘mates’, as Roddy referred to them. He no longer looked out of place as he wielded a pick axe or a spade. His shoulders were gradually broadening, powerful muscles were developing on his arms, and his oncedelicate skin became weathered and brown from working in the open air. He was gradually acquiring skills; bricklaying, plumbing, plastering.

He seemed quite happy. After all, as he pointed out, he was working on buildings, if not designing them, as had been his ambition. ‘It’s all grist for the mill.’ He began to get books on architecture from the library, but fell asleep after only a few pages.

They moved to a bigger room in a more gracious house in Highbury. The weekly rent was a shilling more, but they had their own sink and use of the garden where the washing could be hung out to dry. Hester was walking and able to totter over the long grass that nobody cut. Roddy’s earnings were enough to start putting money in the bank, only small amounts but, for the first time, they were able to look to the future. They felt a sense of achievement that they’d managed to come so far without help from a soul. When Hester went to school, Laura would get a job and they’d be able to rent an entire house to themselves. One day, they planned to have more children, but that day seemed very far away.

In the meantime, the big room had become their home. Laura had managed to make it look quite charming. The ugly sofa was covered with a length of cheap material she’d bought from a market and she’d embroidered cloths for the sideboard and made flowers from tissue paper – there was a huge bowl of frilly red roses on the table.

From the window, they witnessed the changing seasons; admired the blossom on the old gnarled apple tree, picked the fruit when it appeared, watched the leaves fall and cover the grass with a crisp carpet. Then winter would stealthily creep in and the entire scene would become a wonderland of snow or ice.

They’d run away to be with each other and their baby, and were happy at last.

Hester was four when Roddy’s brother, Thomas, appeared on the scene. The builders Roddy worked for had been renovating a row of Regency properties in Primrose Hill that were almost finished. Prospective purchasers were already being shown around. One night, Roddy came home, his face full of smiles, and described with amusement the expression on Thomas’s face when he’d come into a bedroom and found his younger brother on his knees painting the skirting.

‘He looked shattered,’ Roddy chortled. ‘But the thing is, Lo, the most amazing thing, is that I felt superior! I felt a proper man, a genuine worker, not a poncey git who spends his life buying and selling shares, like Tom does.’

‘A poncey git!’ Laura exclaimed, shocked. She wasn’t sure what it meant, but it sounded awfully rude.

‘That’s mild compared to some of the names we call the people who come to view.

I daren’t tell you the others.’

Roddy wasn’t laughing a few days later when he told Laura that his father had turned up that morning.

‘What did he want?’ she asked, suddenly scared.

‘He’ll forgive me everything if I come home, even put me back in his will. He said it’s not too late for me to go to university.’ He paused. ‘What’s the matter, Lo? Why are you crying?’ he asked in alarm.

‘I don’t want you to leave, that’s why. Oh!’ She was being selfish. ‘But I understand completely if you do. I’ll manage on my own. I’ll be all right.’

He was on his knees in front of her in a flash, his arms around her. ‘You ridiculous girl! As if I’d leave. I told my father to … well, I won’t say what I told him to do. How could you think such a thing of me?’

‘You looked so serious. I thought you’d made up your mind,’ Laura sobbed.

‘I looked serious for quite another reason. My father has discovered our address. He’s written to your father. I think we can expect quite a few visitors soon.’

Laura was horrified. She wasn’t yet twenty-one and wasn’t sure how much control she had over her life. ‘They’ll try to prise us apart.’

‘I know,’ Roddy said gravely.

‘Your mother will want Hester. She refused to see me, but she offered to take the baby, remember?’ His family hadn’t wanted him to get involved with a vicar’s daughter. They had high hopes for their youngest son. Thomas’s wife was the daughter of a viscount.

‘I certainly do. She was desperate to get her hands on her.’

‘I think we should move.’ She glanced around the room. She’d become very fond of it. It would be a wrench to leave, but the last thing in the world she wanted was to come face to face with her father. He might bring his sister with him, her domineering Aunt Caroline, who’d called her a slut when she’d broken the news that she was pregnant.

‘I think we should move too, but they know who I work for and can always track us down that way. I’ll have to find another job.’ That would be another wrench.

He would be leaving behind a whole crowd of friends – mates.

Next morning, Laura frantically began to pack their things in Roddy’s school trunk, but they’d acquired so much over the years; bedding, dishes, cutlery, Hester’s clothes, that not even half would fit. Not that it mattered yet; they still had to find somewhere else to live.

She decided to go out and look in the windows of sweet and tobacconists where cards were displayed advertising rooms to let and items for sale – it was how they’d found their present room as well as Hester’s pram and pushchair. The pram had eventually been sold the same way.

From being an irascible baby, Hester had become a quiet, self-contained child.

She rarely bothered her parents with demands. Laura often felt guilty, wondering if her unplanned daughter sensed the impact she had made on their lives. Their worlds had been turned upside down. When they’d first made love, they’d been little more than children. It hadn’t crossed their minds they might be making another human being.

‘Shall we go for a walk, darling?’ She tried to keep the edginess out of her voice. Her father might have received the letter that morning telling him of their whereabouts. He might come looking for her straight away. Any minute, there could be a knock on the door. She wouldn’t answer, and prayed there was no one else in the house who would – it was usually empty except for her and Hester during the day.

Hester was always ready for a walk. Laura dressed her in one of the pretty frocks she’d made from a scrap of pink and white gingham. It had smocking on the front and lace trimming on the collar and cuffs. She’d never been much good at needlework at school – perhaps it was necessity that had made her an expert.

They were outside the house and she was fastening the straps of the rickety pushchair, when the garden gate flew open and Roddy came in pushing a bike.

‘The chaps are covering for me at work and I borrowed the bike,’ he panted.

‘Laura, how do you fancy moving to Bootle? It’s a little town on the edge of Liverpool.’

One of the men he worked with had a brother there, Colm, who had his own property maintenance business and was looking for a partner, he explained. The pay wasn’t much, but the hours were regular. ‘And Colm will find us somewhere to live. He mainly works for landlords and one is bound to have an empty property.

Rory, that’s my mate, will even take us up there in the lorry on Sunday.’

It was a perfect solution. Their relatives would never find them so far away. ‘I fancy it very much, Roddy,’ Laura said breathlessly.

And that was how Roddy, Laura and Hester Oliver came to live in Bootle.

‘Would you like some cocoa, darling?’ Laura asked.

‘I’d love some.’ Roddy was blinking tiredly.

She slid carefully off the sofa, put a cushion under his feet, and went into the kitchen. It was a fine big room, large enough to hold the table where they ate and she cut out material. It had a cast iron range, but she only made a fire once a week to heat water for the washing and for them to have baths – the tin bath hung on the wall in the yard. The cooking she did on the relatively modern gas stove.

She had no complaints about their accommodation. The landlord was very pleasant, though it would be nice if the flat had been wired for electricity. Sewing by gas light hurt her eyes and she’d noticed Vera Monaghan’s house had electricity.

They had the entire bottom floor, comprising three rooms, a kitchen, and even an indoor lavatory, to themselves. The only common area was the hallway, which they shared with upstairs. After living in one room for so long, it seemed the height of luxury to have their own, separate bedroom. Hester slept in the smallest room at the back.

No, the flat was fine. It was its situation that she found so depressing. Glover Street must be the most miserable street on earth, added to which the woman who lived in the flat above, Mrs Tate, was truly horrible, screaming at her poor daughter every night when she came home from work, usually very late, almost midnight. The girl was a fragile little thing, who looked about twelve, with a withered arm, and was only seen on her way to and from school. Laura had tried to speak to her a few times, but the girl looked scared out of her wits and didn’t answer. She didn’t seem quite all there. Mrs Tate rudely ignored her attempts to pass the time of day.

The kettle boiled, she made the cocoa, and took it into the living room where Roddy was almost asleep. She sat in an armchair so as not to disturb his feet.