Daughters of the Mersey (3 page)

‘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, ‘What’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. ‘They 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.’

‘Oh, I do, Mum. I promise I’ll take great care. Being able to use the heater will be marvellous over the winter. The last thing I want is to burn the summer house down.’

The next morning, Milo carried the heater up to the summer house and Leonie positioned it against the brick wall. She impressed on Milo that he alone must be responsible for lighting it and turning it out every night.

She showed him how to manage it and checked that he could. ‘This old summer house will go up like a tinder box if it catches fire but I think you’re old enough to take responsibility for your own safety and that of your friends.’

‘I am, Mum. I promise I’ll be very careful.’

‘Don’t forget,’ she warned, ‘at the first sign of fire, get everybody out as fast as you can.’

Customers started to
come in response to Leonie’s advertisements. She enjoyed sewing for them. It brought purpose to her life.

She was sewing one day when she heard the phone ring. ‘My name is Elaine Clifford,’ an attractive, husky voice told her. ‘I’ve designed three summer dresses and made paper patterns so that a home dressmaker could make them. I need to test my work by having them made up in some cheap material. It’s sort of experimental. Would you be interested in doing that for me?’

‘That sounds intriguing,’ Leonie said. ‘Yes, I’m very interested.’

‘Good. When can I come round to see you?’

‘This afternoon or tomorrow. What time would suit you?’

Elaine Clifford gave a hoot of pleasure. ‘This afternoon, say three o’clock. Is that all right?’

‘That would be excellent,’ Leonie replied and spent the intervening time wondering about her. She sounded young and enthusiastic.

When Leonie answered the ring of the doorbell shortly after three, she found a smartly dressed young lady on the step. Elaine Clifford looked elegant in navy blue and white. Her clothes looked expensive. Leonie knew she could not reproduce clothes like that.

‘Come to my sewing room,’ she said, leading the way.

Leonie had rearranged her room and put a chair each side of a table where she could spread out her patterns and fabrics to show customers. ‘Take a seat,’ she said.

Elaine took off her coat and hat, and Leonie hung it on the peg on the door and hooked her hat on top. Elaine had thick, dark shiny hair
and friendly dark eyes. She sat down and opened her case to spread her sketches and paper patterns across the table for Leonie to see.

‘Before I was married,’ she said, ‘I worked in the fashion department of George Henry Lee’s and I loved it.’ Leonie nodded. It was one of Liverpool’s more expensive department stores, too expensive for her.

‘I gave up to get married and that’s long enough ago for me to feel the need for more to fill my days. They sell lovely clothes. Very fashionable clothes.’

Leonie could see she was ambitious. ‘The height of fashion.’

‘Yes, well, I’m hoping to make a new career designing clothes and selling paper patterns of them to the trade. There are several large firms who sell patterns for dressmakers.’

‘Yes, I sent for those three heavy pattern catalogues so my customers can choose what they want.’ Leonie pointed them out on a shelf.

‘I’m hoping to sell my designs to one of them,’ Elaine said. ‘I understand some of their designers are freelance. And I’ve noticed magazines quite often give away free paper patterns.’

‘They probably get them from the big companies.’

‘Well, what I want to do is to check my designs. I want you to cut out the garments and run them up in cheap material. I have to be sure my patterns work and that they are simple enough for the home dressmaker to follow.’

‘I’ll be glad to do that.’ She’d enjoy doing it, it was something different. Leonie pulled the first of Elaine’s designs towards her and studied it. ‘This is quite complicated – a sophisticated design. It would take some degree of skill to make it up.’