A Liverpool Legacy Page 8

  Lilian his wife and the eldest of his three sons, Roderick, had been killed in a freak daylight air raid in 1941. They had been visiting Lilian’s mother and sister when the house had received a direct hit, wiping out all that side of the family. Roderick had been the son most interested in working in the business and the most able. Peter had praised him and said he always pulled his weight. He’d been the designated heir for the job of managing it.

  Marcus, his youngest son, had started work in the office too, but both Pete and Roderick had thought his heart wasn’t in it, that it didn’t suit him. It had been his own wish to leave and he’d tried several other careers afterwards, some with more success than others.

  Marcus had married in 1938 and James had expected that to settle him down, but the following year he’d been off again. He’d volunteered to join the King’s Own Regiment where his public school education had been sufficient to ensure that he’d been sent for officer training and offered a commission. His rather aggressive manner seemed to suit the army and though he saw little actual fighting throughout the war, he’d achieved promotion to the rank of captain.

  Always in the past he’d become dissatisfied in a year or two and moved on to another job, but the army didn’t allow for personal choice, especially not in wartime. Now it was over, Marcus had written to say he couldn’t wait to get out and that he felt he ought to do his duty by the family business and try to restore it to its pre-war profitability.

  James was not sure Marcus had the ability to do that, but he would have to earn his living. At least he’d married well. Elvira had been an eminently suitable choice, being the daughter of a small but long-established firm of soap makers. Surely he’d settle down once he came home.

  Nigel was older by two years and a totally different personality. He’d gone haring off to India in 1936 and James had heard little from him since. But Nigel had a better brain than Marcus, he was more academic and had achieved a degree in archaeology from Liverpool University, though he’d been unable to see that there were subjects that might be more useful to him in business than that.

  He’d played around on archaeological digs in Crete and Syria for a few years, before joining the Colonial Service and going out to India, and once war had been declared he’d been trapped there for the duration. Now at last he had written to say he’d given in his notice and hoped to get a passage home. He, too, felt it was his duty to join the family firm.

  He’d married two years after arriving in India. His wife Clarissa had been born there, and it seemed her father was a senior official in the Indian Railway Service. Her only experience of life in England had been seven years in boarding school, and James had misgivings about how she was going to get on without servants in austerity Britain.

  He’d meant to talk to Peter about both his sons joining the firm but he’d not got round to it. Peter would surely have been happy to train them both. All would have gone well except for this terrible accident. But what really worried him was Peter’s will. He’d have made a new one when he married for the second time, but in James’s opinion Millie had been an unfortunate choice of wife. The best he could hope for was that Peter had left his half share in trust for his two young sons. As James saw it, if it was going to Millie it could give them problems. She could turn difficult. He didn’t trust that girl.

  All the misgivings he’d had when Roderick had died returned to plague him. His back had been troubling him from long before that but it was his profound grief at the death of his wife that had given him insomnia. He’d never recovered his health since then. He’d do his best for his two remaining sons by trying to return to work and take Peter’s place to help them ease in.

  He rang the vicar about Peter’s funeral. He was sympathetic and James couldn’t halt his words of comfort, but he promised to take over most of the funeral arrangements on his behalf. James rang their solicitor to tell him of Peter’s death; he was full of sympathy too, and said he’d already been notified of his death by his wife and had looked out the will. The news couldn’t have been worse and was very worrying: Millie would inherit Peter’s half share of the business. It meant that half of the profit would be going her way and they’d never ease her out of the door while she owned half. It made James feel so sick that he had to go and lie down again. His brother’s death was giving him so much extra work and worry.

  Chapter Seven

  Millie was dreading the funeral. There was something frighteningly final about that, it was the end of everything she’d known. And every time she closed her eyes, Pete’s face was before her, seeming to urge her on as he often had, ‘Come on, love, you’ll get through it,’ the corners of his mouth turning up in their habitual half-smile. He only left her thoughts when she had to concentrate on something else.

  Pete had been brought to Liverpool by the undertakers and was lying in their chapel of rest. Millie went to see him the evening before the funeral and tried to persuade Sylvie to go with her. She was still very much troubled by what had happened and refused. Millie was afraid she was still blaming herself for the accident.

  Pete had been laid in his coffin but it was open. She sat with him for more than an hour, thinking of all he’d meant to her. A white cloth had been used to hide the wound on the side of his head but she lifted it away to see for herself. She’d been told the swinging boom had fractured his skull and caused his death. She shuddered to see the wound but it settled her mind once and for all: there never had been any hope of saving his life.

  She went home to explain this to Sylvie, believing it would help quieten her fears. ‘I’ll take you to see that wound for yourself,’ she said.

  But Sylvie shook her head at the thought. ‘I couldn’t! I’ve never seen a dead person.’

  ‘There’s nothing to be frightened of,’ Millie said. ‘Pete loved you, he’d never have done anything to harm you. Looking at him, I could almost believe he’d just fallen asleep.’

  ‘That’s what you want to believe,’ Sylvie said.

  Her insight surprised her mother. ‘I think you should come and see him. You’ll be able to say goodbye to him.’

  Sylvie leapt to her feet. ‘I’ve told you, Mum,’ she flared, ‘I’m not going. I don’t want to,’ and she went banging up the stairs to her bedroom before Millie could stop her.

  The state allowed the bereaved an additional issue of clothing coupons and Valerie had applied for them on behalf of them all, but Millie was not in the mood to look for new clothes. She had a grey suit and thought that would do well enough. Pete would not think black clothes a necessity.

  Sylvie had been fascinated with Dior’s New Look which was said to be taking the women of the country by storm. She’d made cuttings of pictures from newspapers and magazines showing the longer more glamorous clothes, but very few had reached the shops in Liverpool. The government was campaigning against the new style, saying it was a waste of cloth and the country couldn’t afford it at this time. Usually Sylvie needed no encouragement to add to her wardrobe, but though Helen took her when she went to buy her own outfit, they could find no black clothes in the New Look and so Sylvie bought nothing. She borrowed a navy coat and hat from Valerie.

  James had been kind enough to make all the funeral arrangements. William Charles, Pete’s grandfather, had bought a large family grave in a churchyard in Mossley Hill, and Pete was to join his forebears there. Helen had volunteered to provide the refreshments for the mourners in her house, which happened to be conveniently near the church.

  Millie had given much thought as to whether their sons should attend and had come to the conclusion that it might help them cope with their grief if they did. The point of the funeral was to give family and friends an opportunity to say their last farewells. Both Simon and Kenneth had been close to their father.

  The morning of the funeral was wet and overcast. Millie collected the two small boys from school wearing the
ir school uniforms, their faces white and anxious. The church was full because the service was being held at lunchtime so the company staff could attend without taking much time off. Millie and Sylvie were in tears throughout the service. The sight of Pete’s coffin standing on its bier at the front of the church and the organ music made it impossible to hold them back.

  Out in the churchyard afterwards it was worse. Floral tributes were laid out along the grassy edges of the graveyard paths. Millie could see the family grave had been opened up in readiness to receive Pete and the ornate black marble superstructure lifted off on one side. She read again the list of names outlined in gold.

  William Charles Maynard 1817–1895. His wife Isabel Louise Haskins Maynard 1826–1857, and nine of their children, five sons and four daughters.

  Pete had told her his grandmother had died of a haemorrhage during her last childbirth, though her baby daughter had survived. Millie could understand why the Maynards considered William Charles to be the founding father of their family. He was said to have been kindly and paternalistic to his employees, and had meant to leave the world a better place than he’d found it.

  He should have had an enormous family of descendants by now but fate had decreed otherwise. To help immigrants coming over during the Irish potato famine, he gave some of them work in the factory but they were half starved and ill, and brought disease to both his employees and his family.

  Of his ten children, only Pete’s father William Alfred 1851–1896 had survived long enough to provide strong sons to carry on the family business. He had married Eleanor Mary Willis Maynard 1860–1932 and now their son William Peter was about to join them.

  Valerie and Helen paused with the boys to remember their forebears, and Millie felt the bonds tightening between her and their families, but Uncle James stood apart and said little beyond, ‘Heartfelt condolences, my dear. A great loss, I shall miss Peter too.’

  She had always felt that James hadn’t bonded with the rest of the family. Their kinsmen the Willises were there in force, several elderly aunts, uncles and cousins. Millie knew most of them because Pete had kept in touch. In his youth, Pete had been close to his cousin Jeffrey Willis, a giant of a man, whom he’d seen as something of a war hero because he’d spent months fleeing from the Japanese advance across Asia. He came over to kiss Millie and tell her how sorry he was. She was especially glad to see Hattie Willis and gravitated to her for the final part of the ceremony.

  It was thinking of Pete that gave her the strength to control her tears while she used the brass shovel to throw the first soil down on his coffin. ‘You can do it,’ he was saying. ‘You always knew I’d have to leave you one day, I was so much older than you.’

  Millie let most of her family leave the graveyard before her and spent a few moments seeking her mother’s grave. Pete had marked it with a simple stone that read: Miriam Hathaway 1890–1928. These were the two people she’d loved most and they were lying not very far apart.

  She had put flowers on her mother’s grave fairly regularly at first but now the vase lying on its side and the few dried stalks caught up against the headstone made her feel guilty. She retraced her steps to pick up one of Pete’s many wreaths to put on her grave and found this time that Hattie had followed her. She caught at Millie’s hand and said, ‘We none of us forget our mothers.’

  Hattie’s was a face from the past and once they reached Helen’s house she spoke kindly of Pete. ‘You made the last seventeen years of his life happy,’ she told Millie. ‘I’m glad of that, he deserved to be happy.’

  ‘How are you?’ Millie asked. She’d been fond of Hattie who had been kind and motherly towards her when she’d needed it most. Valerie and Helen were making a fuss of her, they were glad to see her too.

  Sylvie wouldn’t leave Millie’s side. ‘Who is this old lady?’ she whispered.

  Hattie heard her. ‘You won’t remember me,’ she smiled, ‘but I remember you very well. You were a tiny baby when I saw you last. The prettiest baby I’d ever seen, I knew you’d grow up to be beautiful. Pete must have been proud of you.’

  ‘No.’ Sylvie burst into tears again, and started to gabble about being on the boat. Millie drew her away and it was left to Helen to explain Sylvie’s problem.

  ‘If there’s anything I can do to help, you must let me know,’ Hattie said as she kissed Millie goodbye.

  James was woken every morning at nine o’clock when his man, Jasper Dando, came to his room to open his curtains and plump up his pillows. This morning when he set his breakfast tray across his legs, James saw there was a letter propped against the teapot.

  ‘From my younger son,’ he said, recognising the writing, but he liked to eat his boiled egg and toast before they grew cold so he put it aside until he had poured his second cup of tea.

  Dear Father,

  Thank you for your assurance that the firm will welcome me back. It has been frustrating waiting so long for my turn to be demobbed. I’m very much looking forward to returning to civvie street and getting down to the job of putting the old firm back on its feet.

  I shall be free of the army by Wednesday next and expect to be in Liverpool on Thursday. Would you be willing to put me and Elvira up until we can find a house of our own? I hope we won’t be a burden on you for too long.

  The shock gave James such a jolt that he spilled tea on his eiderdown. Irritably, he tossed the letter aside and mopped at the stain with his serviette. It hadn’t occurred to him that Marcus would want to come and live with him. The lad hadn’t been able to get away quickly enough when he’d been twenty years of age, and he’d only been back for two or three days at a time since.

  Thursday next? And bringing his wife too? James felt quite agitated. He’d lived alone with Dando since Lilian and Roderick had been killed, and he’d reached the time of life when he needed peace and privacy. He’d already been upset by Peter’s death and the worry about his will, but now in addition it seemed his domestic life would have to change.

  For years he’d organised it to suit himself. Almost every evening Dando drove him to the Connaught Club by seven o’clock where he ate a light dinner. He let it be known that it was a private club for gentlemen but it was actually a gaming club. In his youth he’d played roulette and blackjack and stayed until the early hours of the morning, but now his ill health prevented that and he had Dando bring the car to the door at ten thirty.

  He knew many of the members and met them in the bar where he enjoyed a pre-dinner drink. Like him, many were widowers; mostly they were retired and had run Liverpool’s largest businesses in their working life. They provided interesting conversation over dinner and James counted it his social life.

  But as Marcus was being demobbed and had decided to return to Liverpool to work in the business, he really should . . . Yes, he felt obliged to provide a roof over his head. Perhaps it wouldn’t be for long, although he couldn’t count the number of times he’d discussed with his friends the acute shortage of residential property in the city in the wake of the bombing. Perhaps Elvira’s family could help. Anyway, they must have enough money to buy a place of their own. It would just be a question of them buying a house when a suitable one came on the market.

  When Dando came to take his tray away, he asked him to tell Mrs Trotter, who came in to clean on three mornings a week, to prepare a room for his son and his wife.

  ‘Which room did you have in mind, sir?’ Jasper Dando was a small and slightly built man, with a thin ferrety face and a deferential manner.

  ‘The big one overlooking the back garden.’ It was at the other side of the house and well away from his own. Dando slept in the old servants’ quarters in the attic. He’d taken over two bedrooms and turned one into a little sitting room for himself.

  ‘And how long will they be staying, sir?’

  ‘Not too long, I hope.’

  The
following Thursday, James was having his lunch when he heard the doorbell ring. He listened when Dando went to answer it, and as soon as he heard Marcus’s voice he put down his knife and fork and went out to greet him. A car with gleaming paintwork and sparkling chrome, brand new, a rare sight these days, was pulled up at his front steps and his son was unloading suitcase after suitcase on to the gravel.

  ‘Marcus, my dear. Hello.’ He hadn’t seen him for some time and he seemed almost a stranger, though like him he wore thick bottle-glass spectacles in heavy dark frames. He was a big burly man, both tall and broad. He was also beginning to develop something of a paunch, and as for Elvira, he hardly recognised her.

  He’d seen little of her since their wedding day when he’d thought her quite a handsome girl and a catch for Marcus, but she’d put on more weight than any woman should and now she looked matronly. Her cheeks were flushed and there was an aura of pent-up anger about her. She reached up to kiss him. It was an impatient peck on his cheek.

  ‘How are your parents? Well, I hope,’ James said. ‘Do come in. Dando will show you up to your room.’

  ‘This way, madam.’ Dando was heading for the stairs.

  ‘Would you kindly help with our cases?’ Her tone was frosty.

  ‘Sorry.’ He turned back immediately to scoop up two suitcases.

  ‘You’ve brought a lot of luggage,’ James said.

  Marcus gave him a quick hug. ‘I’ve had to arrange for two more trunks to come by train, Pa.’

  It looked as though they were planning to stay for months. ‘You can use the bedroom next to yours as a storeroom.’

  Mrs Trotter came from the kitchen to help with the baggage, wiping her hands on her apron. He’d asked her to work a few extra hours today.

  Marcus looked at her vacantly. ‘Hello, it’s Mrs Trotter, isn’t it?’ He too seemed to be struggling to hide his anger. ‘And Dando, how are you? Nothing has changed here.’