Authors: Vivienne Dockerty
“Does that mean that I have to get a job now, Dad?” asked Rosaleen, who had just left the Ladies College in Chester and had a small allowance given to her.
“Yes, Rosie, I’m sorry, but you’re very good at flower arrangements, maybe a florist will take you on.”
“And I suppose that goes for the rest of us,” Eddie put in bitterly. “Us lads will have to scrat around for a living like the rest of the men in the building trade, fighting for anything that we can turn our hand to.”
“We could ask Uncle Michael if he’d set us on at Sheldon,” said Terry. “Seeing that it was our Great Aunt Maggie that started the company, we’re entitled being family.”
“Don’t even think about it. You’re not going cap in hand to that two-timing sod, begging your pardon, Glad.”
“He may have a point, though, Johnny. Sheldon Properties will weather the storm like they always have and now Michael’s sons are at the helm, surely they would take some of their kin on.”
“Gladys! Michael will probably buy everything I owned from the bank at a knock down price. No, they go to work for him over my dead body.”
“So when is this all going to happen?” asked Sheena. “I won’t be getting my big white wedding then, Dad?”
“No, sorry Princess and your poor mother is going to lose this house, cancel her accounts at all the department stores and probably have to resign from the Rotary Club. Isn’t that right Glad?”
His wife nodded at him glumly.
“So where are you going to be living then?” asked Eddie, thinking that he may as well move back to Wallasey, at least he would get a welcome at Irene’s home.
“On the corner. I put a semi in your mother’s name on the advice of Mr Martin last year. That’s where we’ll be living. It has three bedrooms, so you lads can sleep in one, the two girls in another and me and your mother in the double room.”
“But those houses only have a box room for the third room,” wailed Rosaleen. “Sheena and I can’t possibly share a bed.”
“Then you’ll have to find a husband like Sheena has. Sheena, you’ll have to push your beau to get wed.”
He left his family then and limped back to the bedroom where he lay on his bed in turmoil. The kids would hate him now, though they would soon get over it. It was Glad, his wife, he felt sorry for. She’d gone from rags to riches and would be going back to rags again.
Eddie found his mother in the kitchen later where she was tidying away some of the dinner plates that had been left to drain on the rack.
“You didn’t seem surprised, Mum,” he said, thinking sadly that out of all of them she was the one who was going to suffer, having to give up this house and the lifestyle she had grown to love.
“I wondered, Eddie, when your father put that house in my name. He never does anything unless there’s a reason behind it. That’s why you never got your bungalow, because he wanted to play the big man and give it as a wedding gift to Caitlin. I had nothing when I married your father. As you know I was working as a nurse in a cottage hospital near Llangollen and never dreamt that one day I would live in a big house like this one. It’s your dad’s dreams that have been shattered, losing all that he’s built up since his father passed away, and you children who will have a share of nothing. At least the girls will make good marriages, but you lads are going to have to make your own way.”
“Oh I can get a job easily enough, don’t you worry about me. I was working for a scrap dealer when I lived away before and the bloke would give me my old job back if I asked him to.”
“No, Eddie, not a rag and bone man! Surely you could use your expertise in the building trade. With your experience you could easily become a foreman.”
“Too young I think, I’ve only just had my twentieth birthday. Anyway, Mum, you’ve enough to worry you, so let me do the worrying about my life.”
“You’re not going to leave me again, are you Eddie? Your dad will need you and the boys to keep the home fires burning. He’s too ill to find himself a job, so we’ll need all your wages coming in.”
Eddie sighed to himself inwardly. Irene and him would never marry the way things were going on.
Irene couldn’t help but feel a little smug when she heard of the Dockerty’s downfall. What a come down for Gladys, Eddie’s mother, having to leave her great big house and slum it in a small semi. Though maybe some good would come out of it. At least now a lowly shop girl would be on an equal footing with them.
Work had started on a flour mill near to the dock road where Irene lived. She told Eddie about it when he came to see her one evening to report that he hadn’t found any work. The situation in the building trade was getting worse, no new estates were being built and what little building there was had queues of men like Eddie wanting to be taken on.
He visited the flour mill site the next morning, but the only vacancy they had was for laying drains. “Not a problem,” Eddie had told the foreman, his spirits soaring as he felt he’d got the job, but then he was asked if he was in a trade union. Eddie shook his head; his father had never employed union men because he had the fixed idea that they would disrupt the job.
“Sorry,” said the elderly chap. “No union card, no job.”
It posed a problem for Eddie, as he was fed up with trailing about looking for work on the Wirral and his next port of call would have to be Liverpool. His brothers had taken temporary work in a factory in Bromborough, but Eddie hated the idea of being cooped up inside.
As he walked along the dock road dejectedly, a flash of inspiration came. He’d travel over to Neston and see if his uncle would give him a hand. Not take him on as a workman, no that would surely give his father a heart attack, but maybe the Sheldon work force belonged to a union and he could help him get a card?
Eddie caught the train from Woodside to Neston. Luckily he had the fare, as his mother had given him a little money that morning. Selwyn Lodge, where his uncle lived, was near to St Winefred’s, the church that the Dockerty family sometimes attended. Though Eddie had never visited his uncle’s home, he certainly knew where it was.
“Yes, Mr Haines is at home,” said the maid as she answered Eddie’s tentative knock on the front door. “Whom shall I say is calling?”
“My name is Edward Dockerty, would you tell him it’s J.C.’s son.”
“Certainly, Sir, just a moment.”And the maid disappeared down the hallway.
Eddie stepped back to look in appreciation at the old house that belonged to his uncle. He knew the story of the split between his Uncle Michael and Hannah, his grandmother. Sometimes J.C. would bemoan the fact that if Michael hadn’t been so greedy, it would have been them that lived at Selwyn Lodge and they would have had all the advantages that Michael’s sons had. But maybe his uncle had more of a head for business, thought Eddie disloyally. His father was never thrifty and spent money as it came along.
The maid came back and announced that Mr Haines would see him in the drawing room. With a sigh of relief he followed the woman, glad that his uncle hadn’t turned him away. He was shown into a large room that was beautifully furnished and sitting at a mahogany bureau near the window was Maggie’s son. A stooped man in his late eighties, white haired with a ruddy complexion and wearing what Eddie knew to be a dark red quilted smoking jacket.
“Well,” said Eddie’s uncle. “So you’re one of J.C. Dockerty’s sons. Didn’t ever think I’d meet any of Hannah’s issue, can’t say I blame her for never speaking to me again. All long dead now, my enemies, though I’ll probably have to answer to Him upstairs when my time comes. Come over in the light and let me take a look at you. Legs have gone now. Have to use them dreadful sticks or be pushed about like a baby in a damned basket chair.”
Eddie walked over with his hand outstretched. His uncle’s grip was firm and there was nothing but pleasure in his rheumy eyes when he said he was glad at last to meet with one of his own.
“I’ll ring the maid and ask her to bring in some refreshments. Pity you didn’t come and visit me last year and you could have met your Aunt Kate before she died.”
“It isn’t really a social call, Uncle, though I’ve always wanted to meet you, but my father told us to keep away.”
“Yes, I’ve seen him from time to time at St. Winefred’s, but he’s always snubbed me and I can’t say I blame him in a way. But you’re here now. Ah, thank you Mary, I was just going to ring for you. Just leave the pot of tea near Eddie, I’m sure he will pour.”
Eddie pulled up an upholstered chair after he had poured the tea, so that he could be on the same level as his uncle, who was sitting on something like a piano stool.
“I’ll come straight to the point, Uncle Michael. Dad has had to go bankrupt. It wasn’t his fault, but he had taken quite a few loans out and with there being a slump in the building industry the bank has called in his loans. So, my brothers and I have had to take work elsewhere. We’ve all been apprenticed to father, but now my brothers have decided to take factory work. I’ve got the chance of working on a flour mill down in Wallasey, but I need to be in a trade union for them to take me on. I wondered if you had a union work force and if there’s any chance you could get me a card?”
Michael looked at Eddie for a moment considering the young man’s request. He owed the family something, didn’t he, and perhaps this was a way that might give his troubled soul some peace?
“You could come and work for Sheldon, Eddie. I’m sure my sons would find a place for you and as we haven’t been troubled much by the slump, there’d be plenty of work for your brothers too.”
“I don’t think my father would be happy with that, Sir, he would see it as being disloyal to the Dockerty name. But if you could see your way to getting me in a union I would be very much obliged.”
The old man reached into one of the cubicles in a bureau and brought out a sheet of Sheldon Property headed writing paper. He wrote something at length upon it, then handed it to Eddie with a wry smile.
“It’s a pity that is all you’re asking me to do for you Eddie, but this letter will see you right with the union branch in Birkenhead.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and pulled out a five pound note.
“And this will help you with expenses until you earn a wage again.”
Eddie was over the moon now that he had got his job laying down the drains in the foundations of the flour mill. He was able to go to Irene’s house for his evening meal, then walk along later to the bus stop.
One evening in February the snow began to fall with ferocity, just as Eddie was about to take his leave and say goodnight to Irene.
“You can’t go home in this, Eddie,” she said, looking fearfully at the inch of snow that covered the ground already along the dock road.“They might stop the buses when you get to the terminus or maybe in the morning you won’t be able to get into work.”
“I don’t think they’ll expect us in if it continues to fall like this, Irene, but I agree, I might have to walk it home if they stop the buses at Woodside.”
“I think you’d better stay over then. You can stay in the spare bedroom, as you know we’ve no lodgers here at the moment. I’ll just ask mother for her permission, but I’m sure she’ll agree that you can stay given the circumstances.”
Lily agreed reluctantly, but warned that there was to be no shenanigans under her roof.
The couple laughed and agreed there wouldn’t be and around about ten they all went to bed.
It was around two o’ clock in the morning when Eddie heard a noise coming from the landing. Stealthy footsteps trod on the wooden staircase, then silence as the sound disappeared into the night. He was dying for a pee and felt around under the bed for a chamber pot. There wasn’t one, was he to do it out of the window instead? He groaned inwardly, then putting his overcoat on over his vest and long johns, he went down the staircase, intending to go through the kitchen to the outer door and relieve himself in the garden privy.
Irene was sitting in her blue heavy quilted dressing gown by the dying embers of the kitchen fire, as he crept past the back of the sofa that she sat on. He signalled that he was off to the privy and she whispered that she would make him a cup of tea.
Her body was warm as he pressed his shivering one against her later. Her lips were velvety and inviting and he couldn’t help himself. Nearly five long years of denial for each other’s bodies was long enough. They helped themselves to each other, fulfilling a need that would satisfy until the day they said “I do”.
Eddie was kept on at the flour mill site after the drains and footings had been completed.
The foreman liked the way he worked, not always looking for breaks from his toil like some did, so Eddie was employed on the brick work later, a job that he really enjoyed.
He would call on Irene each evening after she had returned from work. Lily was now in charge of cooking and a hot meal was what they both needed at the end of the day.
The events of the snowbound night were never repeated, Irene being fearful that she might get pregnant and Eddie wanting to show his respect and regard for his girl.
So it came as a bit of a shock for both of them when Irene didn’t get her monthly. Eddie had thought that a girl couldn’t get pregnant the first time they had intercourse. Irene knew you could because it had happened to her sister Isabel, but had hoped that lightning wouldn’t strike in the family twice. Lily was going to be mortified that it had happened to both her daughters, especially when she had given permission for Eddie to stay that night.
“Oh well, at least your father will give his permission now,” said Irene thankfully after she told Eddie that she thought she might be expecting. “Perhaps you could arrange for me to come and visit your family. It will be the first grandchild, won’t it, so they’re bound to be pleased?”
“Not the first grandchild, Irene, Caitlin gave birth to a daughter the other day. But I know my father, he still won’t give his permission even if it means you having the child out of wedlock. He can be stubborn, as you know, and this won’t change his mind.”
“Oh no,” cried Irene, putting her head into her hands as the import of Eddie’s words sank in.