Someone opened a door by the pool and a blast of music filled the air: The Who, singing, “I can See For Miles . . . ” “Miles and miles and miles,” Flo sang, until the door closed and all she could hear was the guitarist again. Every night at the Old Tyme Dance while she was being led sedately around the floor to the strains of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling”, or “Goodnight, Eileen”, she thought enviously of the youngsters in the other ballroom leaping around madly to the sound of Dire Straits or ABBA.
Bel hadn’t bothered to inform her that the group they were travelling with were old-age pensioners. Flo had been horrified when they got on the plane and she found herself surrounded by people with hearing aids and walking sticks and not a single head of hair in sight that wasn’t grey.
To her further consternation, there were actually a few wolf-whistles—in this company, two women in their mid-fifties must seem like teenagers: Bel still managed to look incredibly glamorous, though her lovely red hair was in reality lovely grey hair that had required a tint for years.
There were still five more days of the holiday to go, and Flo supposed she’d had quite a good time. During the day, they wandered round Lloret del Mar, admiring the palm trees and the sparkling blue sea. They bought little trinkets in the gift shops. She got Bel a pretty mosaic bracelet, and Bel bought her a set of three little brass plaques that had taken Flo’s fancy. Then they had found a bar that stocked every liqueur in existence and were sampling them one by one. Flo had sent cards to everyone she could think of, including Mr Fritz, though she had no faith that he would get it. Why had he never written as he’d promised? It was six months since he’d left William Square and she worried about him all the time. If she didn’t hear soon, she resolved to go over to Ireland in search of him, even though she didn’t have a proper address.
Evenings, they went dancing. Flo wrinkled her nose: she hated being taken in a pair of gnarled, sunburnt arms for the Gay Gordons or the Military Two-step or, somewhat daringly, a rumba, played to a slow, plodding beat in case it overtaxed a few dicky hearts. Mr Fritz was old, but in her eyes he had always remained the same lovely little man with brown fuzzy hair and twinkling eyes she’d first met in the laundry. The other night one sly old bugger in fancy shorts had had the nerve to get fresh during the last waltz.
“You’re no spring chicken yourself,” Bel snorted, when Flo complained.
“I wouldn’t mind dancing with fellers me own age,” Flo said haughtily. Bel had taken up with Eddie Eddison, a widower in his seventies, who came from Maynard Street, though it seemed daft to come all the way to Spain to click with a feller who lived only two streets away in Liverpool.
Most nights when Bel wasn’t looking, Flo slipped away. She enjoyed sitting on the balcony, staring at the sky, listening to the sounds by the pool, drinking wine.
When she got home, she might do something with her backyard, paint the walls a nice colour, buy some plants and a table and chairs, turn it into one of them patio things. It would be pleasant to sit outside in the good weather. The flat could get stuffy when it was hot.
That’s if the flat remained hers. Oh, Lord, Bel would be cross if she knew she was worrying about the flat again. Flo rested her arms on the balcony and stared down at the pool. Even at this hour children were still up. Two little boys, one about Tom O’Mara’s age, were splashing water at each other in the shallow end. If only she could have brought Tom with her. He would have had the time of his life. Instead of dancing with men old enough to be her father, or sitting alone on a balcony, she could have been down at the pool with Tom. It seemed a normal, everyday thing to do, to bring your grandson on holiday, but the things that normal, everyday people did seemed to have passed her by.
Flo sat back in her chair and sighed. Another few days and they could go home. She couldn’t wait, though she wouldn’t let Bel know she was homesick. She would laugh and smile, and look cheerful, pretend to be having a great time, make the best of things as she always had.
Out of the corner of her eye, she glimpsed a star shoot across the sky. It disappeared into the infinite darkness or was it just her imagination that she could see the faintest, barely discernible burst of yellow, which meant that millions and millions of miles away there’d been an almighty explosion?
The idea made her shudder, and she remembered being told as a child that God had created the world in seven days. “But did He create the universe as well, Dad?
Did He create the sun and the moon and the stars at the same time?” She couldn’t remember what his answer had been.
It was ages since she’d thought about Dad. Living in Burnett Street had been perfect when he was alive and Martha had yet to assume the role of Being In Charge.
Flo had never planned on getting married, but had just known that one day she would and that she would have children, two at least. Then, as if the shooting star had struck its target, Flo felt as if every muscle in her body had instantly wasted, as if every bone had turned to jelly. All that was left was her heart, which pounded like a hammer in her cavernous chest.
She’d spent her entire adult life in the way she was spending this holiday! Making the best of things, pretending to enjoy herself. Waiting for it to end!
“Oh, Lord!” The awful feeling passed as quickly as it had come, but in the mad scramble of thoughts that followed she knew that she should have made the best of things in a more practical way, by marrying Gerard Davies, for instance, or almost any one of those other young servicemen. It was no use blaming Martha. It was Flo’s own fault that she’d wasted her life.
The basement flat felt unusually chilly when she arrived home from Spain to find three letters waiting for her on the mat. She went through them on her way to the kitchen to put the kettle on, aching for a cup of tea made with ordinary leaves instead of those silly teabags.
Two were bills, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw the name and address of a solicitor in Castle Street on the third. She’d never had a letter from a solicitor before, and her hands were trembling as she tore it open, convinced that the little Fritzes were demanding formally that she quit the flat.
The heading was enough to make her burst into tears.
“Re: Fritz Erik Hofmannsthal (deceased).”
He was dead! Mr Fritz was dead—and not one of his children had bothered to let her know. Flo forgot the tea and poured a glass of sherry instead. Her imagination ran riot as she thought of all the different ways he might have died, none of them pleasant. She’d like to bet he’d wanted to return to William Square and be with her, but his children hadn’t let him. Lovely, long-cherished memories flicked through her brain: the laundry on Tuesdays when he’d brought cream cakes, the day Stella had taken the photograph of him and his girls outside the family had just come back from Anglesey and seemed so happy. How strange and cruel life could be that it should all have turned so sour. She recalled their first weekend in the Isle of Man, two old friends comfortably together at last.
It was a long time before she could bring herself to read the letter, to learn that dear Mr Fritz had bequeathed her the leasehold of the basement flat, as well as the launderette in Smithdown Road. The letter finished, “We would be obliged if you would telephone for an appointment so that arrangements can be made for various papers to be signed.”
“Mr Hofmannsthal’s children are seeking to question the validity of his will,” the solicitor informed her. He was younger than expected, not the least bit pompous, and from his build and his broken nose, looked like a rugby player or a boxer. “But as same was dictated in my presence ten years ago while my client was in full possession of his senses, there is no question of it not being valid.”
“I don’t think the little Fritzes liked me very much,” Flo said, in a small voice. “Least, not since they stopped being little.”
“They like you even less now, which isn’t surprising.
You’re very much the fly in the ointment. They want the house in William Square put on the market, but it won’t fetch anything like it would have done had the basement been included.” The solicitor smiled, as if this pleased him enormously.
“I’m sorry,” Flo said weakly.
“Good heavens, Miss Clancy!” he exploded. “Sorry is the very last thing you should be. It’s what my client, Fritz Hofmannsthal, wanted, and I’m sure he had the best reason in the world for doing so.”
Flo felt herself go pink, wondering what Mr Fritz might have told him. “Do I still have to look after the other launderettes?” she enquired.
The solicitor was so outraged to discover that she’d been “acting as manager”, as he put it, for six whole months without even so much as a thank-you from the little Fritzes, that he suggested putting in a claim against the estate for “services rendered”. “We’ll demand ten pounds a week for the period involved, and probably end up with five. Will that suit you?”
Flo was about to say she didn’t want a penny, but changed her mind. Even if she gave away the money, it was better than the little Fritzes having it. “Five pounds a week would be fine,” she said.
The whole thing went into another of Flo’s invisible boxes marked “Secret”. If people found out, they would wonder why Mr Fritz had remembered her so generously.
She owned her own property. She owned her own business. But no one would ever know.
In his day Edward Eddison had been a professional magician and had appeared halfway down the bill in theatres all over the country. When he married Bel Szerb in a register office two months after their holiday in Spain, he produced two white doves from his sleeve, which fluttered around the room, much to the annoyance of the registrar who disapproved of confetti, let alone live birds.
Bel, gorgeous in lavender tulle and a feathered hat, screamed with laughter when a bird settled happily on her head.
Flo, still shaken by the strange, unsettling thoughts she’d had in Spain and the loss of Mr Fritz, felt depressed when the ceremony was over, and Bel and Eddie departed to Bournemouth on their honeymoon. The newly-weds intended to live in Eddie’s house in Maynard Street, and Bel planned on doing the place up from top to bottom. Flo tried to cheer herself up by decorating her own flat. She painted the walls white and the big wooden beams across the middle of the room black. The plaques Bel had bought her in Spain went well against the glossy surface, and when she mentioned this to her ladies, they presented her with several more. She painted the little yard a pretty rose pink, bought garden furniture and plant-holders, but when it came to new furniture for inside, she couldn’t bring herself to part with a thing.
After all, Mr Fritz and Jimmy Cromer had struggled downstairs with the settee and chair out of Stella’s sitting room, as well as the big sideboard, which was probably an antique—if the little Fritzes had known it would probably have gone for auction, along with the lovely oak wardrobe and chest-of-drawers in the bedroom. As for the brass bed, she’d no intention of changing it for one of those padded-base things like they’d had in Spain—it had been like sleeping on wooden planks. She even felt quite fond of the little rag rug in front of the fire, which had been there when she arrived. She made do with buying pictures for the walls and armfuls of silk flowers to arrange in vases, and a nest of round tables to put the vases on. The big table she folded against the wall because she rarely used it. Nowadays, she ate on the settee in front of the television. Last Christmas, Bel had bought her a coffee table for this very purpose, an ugly thing, Flo thought secretly, with legs like clumps of giant onions.
The only light that glimmered through this dark period was her grandson Tom, seven years old and a continual thorn in the side of Nancy O’Mara, just like his grandad, Tom came and went as he pleased, no matter what Nancy told him. Hugh, of whom Flo saw little these days, appeared to have given up on his son and took no interest. On Sundays, Flo would return from Mass to find Tom sitting on the steps outside her flat, ready to spend the day with her. She took him to matinee performances at the cinema. Once she got used to the idea that she was her own boss and could take time off whenever she pleased, she and Tom sometimes went to football matches to see Everton or Liverpool play.
Tom was at Flo’s place too often to be kept hidden in one of her secret boxes, so Bel got used to finding him there, though she thought it most peculiar. “You’re obsessed with the O’Maras, Flo,” she hissed. “Tommy, Hugh, now little Tom.”
Gradually the dark period passed. It was a relief when the unpleasant middle-aged couple on the ground floor moved out, and a beautiful black girl, still a teenager, with two small children, moved in. But Flo was shocked to the core when she discovered that Chairman was one of the women who took up position along the railings of the square each night. Even so, it was hard not to say, “Good morning,” or “Isn’t it a lovely day?” or “We could do with some rain, couldn’t we?” when they came face to face. The two became rather wary friends, although Chairman continually felt the need to defend her doubtful and precarious lifestyle. The husband walked out on me. No one’ll give me a job with two kids under school age. How else am I supposed to feed “em and pay the rent?” she demanded aggressively, the first time she came down to the basement flat.
“Don’t go on at me, luv,” Flo said mildly. “It’s your life.
I haven’t uttered a word of criticism, have I?”
“I can see it in your eyes. You’re disgusted.”
“No, I’m not, luv. The disgust is in your own eyes. I think you’re ashamed, else you wouldn’t go on about it so much.”
Charmian stormed out, but returned the following night to say, “You’re right, but I don’t know another way to keep me head above water.”
Flo said nothing. As the months rolled by, she listened patiently while Charmian struggled loudly and vocally with her conscience. When the woman who worked the morning shift in the launderette gave in her notice, Flo casually mentioned it to her upstairs neighbour. “There’ll be a job going the Monday after next, eight till two. The pay isn’t bad, enough for the rent and to keep two kids without too much of a struggle.”