Shattered Dreams (11 page)

Then one morning, to Irene’s amazement, she was told there was a house to rent a few streets away. If she went to the office the following day she’d be given a set of keys. The wheels of the pushchair took wings, as she sped down the hill to give the good news to her aunties. They were just as pleased as she was, though they said they’d miss Irene and Gina if they moved away.

The rest of the day was a whirl, as the women discussed curtains and furnishings, while Irene couldn’t wait until Eddie came home from work. As soon as they had finished their meal he wanted to go immediately to view the house. It was at the bottom of Whaley Lane; a house that used to belong to Eddie’s father, which was bittersweet really when they came to think of it.

It was just around the corner from Acorn Drive where Eddie’s mother lived. A small semi with a downstairs bathroom, so very different from the place where Irene used to live. It had two large gardens, one either side of the driveway and a small one at the back of the house, where grew a profusion of blackcurrant canes.

The couple stood outside the house looking at it longingly, hoping that they could afford the rent, planning the vegetables that they would grow and agreeing that the exterior walls could do with a coat of paint. Irene kept worrying: what if for some reason they didn’t get the keys, what if they had to wait for something else? She really loved this place and she didn’t want her dreams of a rosy future to be shattered. Eddie told her to wait for a moment and disappeared off to his mother’s, coming back shortly with an old wooden coat stand. He stood it by the front door and used one of the heavy pegs to break one of the small glass panels in it, then hopped inside to claim his ownership. “Meredith,” he shouted, using an old music hall expression, “Meredith, we’re in!”

Irene paid the first week’s rent next morning, collected the keys, then she and Eddie went round to the house again the following evening. This time they walked up to the door and opened it with the key. Eddie had brought some glass and putty and busied himself repairing his break in, while Irene measured the windows and looked around. This was to be their little palace, little being the operative word after having all that room at Pear Tree Cottage. The bedrooms were tiny, the living room was small and the kitchen shared its wall with the bathroom and toilet. But they had all the land, plenty of ground to dig over for the war effort and they could be self sufficient if they bought some chickens and a couple of sows. It would be wonderful to be together without others poking their noses in, they both felt happier than they had been since they were wed.

The nights were peaceful now, the Battle of Britain had been won and Winston Churchill gave his famous speech... “Never had so much been owed by so many to so few”.

There was hope in people’s hearts that things might start getting back to normal, although whole streets lay shattered, bomb craters were much in evidence and as the work force was being depleted daily with men enlisting to the Forces, not much building or repair work was done. But after people had mourned their dead, found somewhere new to live and got on with the job of living, the future looked a bit more hopeful for a while.

Eddie was directed by the Ministry of Works to help with the repair of bomb-damaged property in Liverpool. Though he didn’t have much time after his day’s toil, he worked enthusiastically on the house and the garden. The place had been neglected by the previous occupant; she had been elderly and couldn’t do very much other than try to keep body and soul together. He filled the garden with vegetable seedlings that Irene had nurtured in the small wash house attached to the semi, then he dug out trenches for potatoes and onions, bought a couple of fruit trees and built a small wooden hen house. It was lovely working in the garden with the thrushes, blackbirds, robins and chaffinches whistling away merrily, as they waited for their share of worms.

Eddie was working in Liverpool again, as tradesmen were badly needed in the dock area that had taken most of the bombing during the blitz. Any house that could be repaired and made fit to live in was finished as quickly as possible, so that owners who were eager to return could move back again.

Irene never knew of the conditions that Eddie was working in, as he would strip all his clothes off in the wash house, then streak into the bathroom to scrub himself clean. It was only when she came to use the wash tub, that she saw the fleas jumping about all over the place.

But conditions were bad anywhere at that time. A friend of Isabel’s had volunteered to work in munitions. She didn’t have to because she had a family, but the thought that her efforts might bring the end of the war closer made her leave her children with her mother each day. One night she had come in from work exhausted, she slumped into a chair and put her elbows on the table. Her head itched and she rubbed it mechanically, but to her horror a little insect dropped out. Within minutes the table was covered with lice, something she had never seen before in her life!

One day Eddie was working in one of the back streets near the docks when a small boy approached him.

“Me mam wants to talk to you,” he said.

“Oh,” said Eddie. “Who is your mam and where does she live?”

The boy looked up hopefully, he was very thin and his large brown eyes seemed to occupy most of his face.

“Me mam’s name is Mrs Brown and we live in that end house.” He jerked a dirty thumb towards the end of the street.

Eddie felt surprised, he didn’t know anybody around there and he was puzzled as to why the boy’s mother would want to see him.

“Tell your mother that I’ll be along at dinner time. Is it about your house?”

“Yes,” the boy answered a bit uncertainly.

Eddie put his hand in his pocket and drew out a few coppers to give to the undernourished little soul. The boy’s face brightened and he dashed off to the corner shop, coming out again with a bulging paper bag in his hand.

After Eddie had eaten his lunch of spam sandwiches, he walked along the street to inspect the house. He stepped into the road to get a better view of the roof; there was a gaping hole in it. The door of the house opened and a woman came out to talk to him. She had been pretty once, but time and suffering had taken its toll.

“Do you think you could mend my roof please?” she asked in a pleading voice.

“I’ll have to ask the boss,” Eddie answered.

“Please do it,” she begged tearfully. “The rain is getting in and the children’s beds are soaked. I’ll pay you anything, only please mend the roof.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but like I said, I must square it with the boss first.”

Eddie walked down to see the foreman in his office, feeling very sorry for the young woman and her children. Although the air raids were mostly responsible for the damage to the houses around there, a lot of the dilapidation was caused by years of the landlords’ neglect.

The foreman looked at his list, only bomb-damaged houses qualified for repair, the woman’s house was not on it.

“It’s not on the list, so we can’t do it,” he said, pushing the paper under Eddie’s nose for scrutiny.

“Then I’ll do it in my dinner hour with the apprentice, it will be good experience for him to work on a roof repair. We can’t have the children’s beds soaking now, can we?”

The foreman shook his head and said he’d turn a blind eye.

Eddie spent his dinner hour next day mending the woman’s roof with the help of the apprentice; he used second hand slates that he had picked up from a tip in the next street. She came to Eddie later and offered him payment from a slim and shabby purse, but he felt he couldn’t accept payment and told her so.

A few days later he was working on another house and an old lady appeared by his side.

“Are you the fella that mended our Cilla’s roof ?” she asked.

“If you mean the roof on the end house, yes,” replied Eddie.

“Then come along to the pub with me, I want to buy yer a drink.

“I’m working, I can’t stop now,” he said a trifle indignantly. “It’ll be my dinner hour soon, I’ll see you then.”

At twelve o’ clock, Eddie took his sandwiches and went along to the pub on the corner of the street. There seemed to be one on the corner of every street in Liverpool, this one was called The Clock. It was a spit and sawdust type of place where people didn’t dress up to enter it, so Eddie didn’t mind the fact that he was wearing his working clothes. He found the old woman in a wide circle of friends, they all seemed to be drinking glasses of light ale.

“Come over here,” she shouted making room for him on the wooden bench beside her. “What’ll yer have to drink?”

“I’ll have the same as you,” he said.

When he was seated comfortably, she lowered her voice and told him that if he went to the shop in the next street and mentioned her name, Mrs Cooper, he would be able to buy two pounds of sugar. Sugar was on strict rations then and if Eddie ever wanted his shoes mending, her old man would do them for him. He thanked her and continued to sip his ale, thinking what a pleasant woman the old lady was, but what she said next caused him to sweat with embarrassment.

“See that house opposite?”

Eddie looked through the pub’s grimy window.

“I’ve got it all arranged for yer. Next time you’re feeling horny, go over to Liz’s house, she’s our Cilla’s sister, she’ll see you’re right and then I think we’ll be square, don’t you?”

Eddie was so relieved when he finished the work in that street and moved on to the next, though he kept looking over his shoulder in case Mrs Cooper appeared again!

Old ladies seemed to make a beeline for Eddie. One day a woman came up to him and asked would he fix her fire grate? She told him that she couldn’t light a fire until it was repaired and the weather was getting chilly. So once again Eddie gave up his dinner hour and went to the house to repair the grate; he was rewarded with tea and cakes for his efforts and felt lucky that he wasn’t propositioned again!

As the war rumbled on, a couple of local women started a Services canteen in Irby. They first got in touch with Northern Command and asked permission to do so. Their request was granted and they were given a permit for rations.

Their idea was to give service men and women, who were billeted in the area, somewhere to go in their free time. They were provided with a hot meal, table tennis for exercise and plenty of chairs by a warm fire. It proved very popular and a weekly dance, where an elderly band volunteered their services, was held in the village hall on Saturday nights to raise the funds to pay for it.

Eddie and Irene managed to find a willing babysitter in Rosaleen, Eddie’s youngest sister. Now eighteen and with no love interest in her life, she was persuaded by Gina’s happy smile and cherub ways to keep an eye on her, so they were able to attend the dance on that first Saturday. Unfortunately there was no M.C., so Eddie took the job on. He loved it: he’d announce each dance, popular then was the rhumba and bossa-nova, then leap off the stage to dance with Irene, or a young lady that he saw hadn’t got a partner. He was such a good dancer that he developed a following, all the girls competed to partner him in the ‘Ladies request dances’.

After the work finished on the houses around the docks, Eddie was directed to work for a contractor who made him a foreman over a gang of six men. It was further out of Liverpool in a place called Litherland. Mostly it was clearance work, as a new estate was needed to house some of the blitz victims who couldn’t return to their homes. The work was very tiring, dirty and dusty; the wallpaper that was hanging on the walls in some houses sheltered all sorts of bugs and the men went home in a terrible state with fleas bouncing off their clothes.

Most of the men liked to slake their thirst in one of the pubs nearby, as the enterprising landlord provided a range of delicious sandwiches and pies. The dinner hour was what it said; an hour and Eddie demanded that they started back at work at one o’ clock on the dot. He was a fairly easy going boss, providing that the men did their work, so he turned a blind eye if one of the workers was five minutes late.

Curly Flanagan was one such worker, but he pushed the five minutes to the limit and arrived a little later each day. At the end of the week he was short by two hours, so Eddie decided to teach him a lesson and dock the man’s pay.

“What’s this?” shouted Curly as he flung open the back door of the house that Eddie was working on. He was a mean-looking man, with eyebrows that met in the middle under a narrow forehead; the type of man who would have been spending time in Walton Jail if it hadn’t been for the War.

“I’m two bloody hours short in me pay packet, don’t think yer goin’ to get away with this.”

Eddie carried on with his work and said over his shoulder, “You didn’t show up for work at one each day like I told you to, so that’s why I’ve docked your pay.”

“We’ll see about that,” retorted the man and, gripping Eddie by his arm, he slung him against the kitchen wall. Next he picked up a lump hammer and brandished it in front of Eddie, effing and blinding, saying what he’d like to do to him. Eddie ducked as the hammer swung at him, then hit Flanagan squarely on the jaw. The man bounced with the force from Eddie’s fist through the back yard door, then cracked his head on the stone flags there. He lay still with blood pouring out of the wound and Eddie thought that he had killed him. He ran with the labourer, who had been working with him and had seen it all, to check his pulse and to see if the man was dead. Thank God he wasn’t, he began to come round and started mouthing obscenities.

Eddie sent his labourer to the telephone box for an ambulance, while the rest of the men in his gang crowded in. A violent row started, with all the workers taking Flanagan’s side.

“Ted shouldn’t have hit him.” “Curly was only messing, he wouldn’t have used the hammer.” “He was only fooling around.”

With the sound of the ambulance came Eddie’s boss, who was told the version by his men before Eddie got a chance. Labourers were hard to find owing to the army conscription, which were decimating the work forces week by week.