Winnie of the Waterfront (17 page)

‘If you’re sacked then you’re sacked,’ she said primly, her bright red lips tightening. ‘By rights
you
should come back on Friday to collect your money, but since there is only half a day due I suppose I can pay you out of the petty cash.’

‘You owe me for last week as well,’ Winnie told her.

Frowning, the clerk consulted her ledger then went to a safe in one corner of the room and brought out a small brown envelope. ‘Winnie Malloy?’

‘That’s right.’

The woman pushed a piece of paper towards her, but held on to the envelope. ‘Sign here, then.’

Winnie signed her name and then held out her hand for the envelope.

‘There you are, now go on, leave the premises.’

‘You still owe me for the work I’ve done this morning.’

For a moment Winnie thought she was going to refuse to pay her. Then, her mouth turned down in a sneer, the woman opened a tin box that stood on top of her desk and picked out one shilling and three pennies and slammed them down on the desk. ‘There you are, now leave!’

‘Thank you.’ Winnie picked up the coins and made her way awkwardly to the door and then slowly out of the building.

As she walked towards the tram stop she wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or upset. She’d been sacked from her job after only one week, and even though she’d hated every moment she’d been there she still felt there was a modicum of disgrace attached to such a thing happening.

However, it was a such a beautiful summer’s
day,
with the sun shining and blue skies overhead, that her feeling of despondency soon melted away. She had enough money in her pocket to pay for her lodgings for at least another week, so surely she could find herself a new job in that time, she told herself confidently.

Bob Flowers watched the Liverpool skyline slowly disappear as the
Patricia
made her way down the Mersey, past Perch Rock and New Brighton. When they reached The Bar the tugs cast off and they were away into the open sea.

It would be six months before he saw the Liver Birds perched proudly on top of the Liver Building again; six months at least before he saw Winnie Malloy again.

He couldn’t get over the surprise of bumping into her like that. He felt furious that the nuns at Holy Cross hadn’t given her his letters. All this time he’d been thinking she didn’t want him to keep in touch with her, and she’d been thinking the same about him.

For the first time since he’d started going to sea he wondered if, after all, he’d been rather hasty in deciding it was the right sort of future for him. Up until now it hadn’t mattered because there was no one in Liverpool, or anywhere else for that matter, who gave a damn about him. Now, having seen Winnie Malloy, knowing it would be six months before he would see her again seemed like a lifetime.

He hoped she would remember her promise to meet him at the Pier Head in November. By then
she
would probably have built a whole new life for herself, and he found himself wondering where he would figure in it.

Mondays were the quietest day of the week at Paddy’s Market. For Sandy Coulson it was the day when he was supposed to tidy out all the storage space, clean up the barrows and sort out all the clobber that hadn’t been sold the previous Saturday.

It was the day when Sandy also took stock of his life and daydreamed about the future. He didn’t intend being a market porter for the rest of his life. As soon as he could save the ackers he was going to have his own business, and once that was underway then in no time at all he would make his fortune.

Getting started was the big thing. First of all he’d have a stall in the market, and the moment that took off he’d get someone to run it. The next step would be to buy a van, and after that he’d open a shop. Only one to start with, but one day he’d have a whole chain of them all across Liverpool and the Wirral.

The biggest problem of all would be deciding what he was going to sell. He was watching points, sizing up which of the market stalls did the best trade. He’d already discovered that having the greatest number of customers wasn’t the same as making the most money.

Up until now it had all been a bit of a dream. Something he’d kept in his head because it encouraged him to squirrel away some of his wages each
week
rather than spending it all at the pub. He liked a pint, but he always made sure that when he did go for a bevvy he didn’t ever get legless and lose control. If you did that you got rolled and all your ackers vanished in a flash. He’d seen it happen so often to other people.

Meeting up with Winnie Malloy after all these years had made him want to turn his daydreams into reality more than ever. It had brought back memories of his childhood and hers, when they’d shared the grub his mam had packed in his lunch tin because the cupboard had been bare at Winnie’s home.

He remembered her father, Trevor, asking him to keep an eye on Winnie and push her to school and back each day in the wheelchair contraption. It had been tough luck on Winnie that her dad had gone off to war and never come home again. Reported missing, if Sandy remembered right.

Her mam had been useless. After hearing the news of her husband she’d gone completely off the rails, and when she’d died Winnie had been packed off to the Holy Cross Orphanage.

It made you think some people had all the bad luck, Sandy reflected. He’d written to Winnie once after she’d been put in the orphanage, but from what she’d told him she’d never been given the letter.

Those nuns sounded a right lot of old mingy-arsed miseries and no mistake. Fancy snatching the wheelchair back off her when she had to leave there. Downright mean! Seeing her struggling to
get
around on those two sticks had made Sandy’s blood curdle.

He liked Winnie. She never winged or fretted about being a cripple. She was the first person he’d ever confided in about what he wanted to do in the future. She had taken everything he’d said about getting his own stall so seriously that it had cleared every scrap of doubt from his mind. He knew now that he could do it if he really worked on it.

On her way back to the hostel in Craven Street, Winnie tried her luck at two other factories as well as at a newsagent’s and a warehouse without any success. As soon as they realised she was disabled she found they weren’t even prepared to consider employing her.

‘Sorry, luv, we’ve nothing that you could do here. You need to be fit, and there’s plenty of those sort looking for work as it is.’

As a last resort she went to see if there was any work at the Royal Infirmary.

‘You look as though you should be a patient here, luv, not trying to get work here,’ the girl on the reception desk commented. ‘There’s far too much running around and nipping up and down stairs even for us clerks. You wouldn’t be able to do a cleaning job either, not crippled the way you are. You need to look for a sitting-down job in an office, something like that.’

Winnie knew she was right but she didn’t bother to explain that she had no training for that sort of work. Knowing that there was no point in going
back
to the hostel until the end of the day she bought herself a bun and a bottle of lemonade and went into St John’s Gardens to sit in the sun to enjoy them.

The thought of being confined to a factory, or even an office, suddenly seemed untenable.

If only she was fit, she thought, she’d like to work right here, looking after the flowers, feeling free and breathing fresh air, even if it did mean being out of doors in all kinds of weather. That was what Bob Flowers had told her had made him take to the sea. Well, she thought sadly, she couldn’t do that either.

The answer of what she might be able to do, and which would also mean more freedom, was Sandy’s suggestion of working at the market the same as he did.

She thought back over the scene on Saturday: the stalls piled high with second-hand goods, well-worn clothes hanging on makeshift rails, factory rejects, damaged goods of all kinds, and people pushing and shoving and grabbing for the things they wanted. Then came the haggling and bartering over the price of items. Was that really the sort of life she wanted?

Only the poorest people from the slums that crisscrossed between Scotland Road and Great Homer Street went to barter in Paddy’s Market. It was the only way they managed to make their money go as far as it possibly could.

St John’s Market, near the centre of Liverpool, was quite different. The stalls were well laid out, the merchandise as good as you could buy from
any
shop, and there was no shame attached to shopping there.

Sandy had talked of having his own stall. She wondered how much more expensive it would be to have a stall in St John’s Market compared to one in Paddy’s Market. Probably well beyond our pockets, she decided. Even a stall in Paddy’s Market would possibly cost too much for us she thought despondently.

Chapter Eighteen

THE WEEK SEEMED
to fly by. When Thursday arrived and she still hadn’t found any work, Winnie became so concerned that she found it difficult to think straight.

Every morning she left the hostel at the same time as she would have done if she’d being going to the factory. She also made sure that she arrived back at the time she would normally have done each evening. Whatever happened, she didn’t want Miss Henshaw finding out that she had lost her job in case she reported it back to Sister Tabitha.

Although the sun was blazing down, and the weather so hot that nobody felt like doing anything except sit in the shade, Winnie spent her days trying to find work. No one would even take her seriously. ‘Take you on when you can’t even stand without two sticks to keep you upright? You’re having me on,’ or ‘No jobs here for cripples, luv, sorry and all that,’ were repeated over and over again.

By Thursday she felt so desperate that she found herself walking towards Crosshall Street. Then, as the grim, turreted orphanage came into view she stopped, knowing she could never bring herself to go back inside the building, let alone ask if there was any work they could offer her.

Hot and uncomfortable in her long black skirt and heavy white blouse she took refuge in a shady spot in St John’s Gardens. She’d give it one more day, she told herself. Something might still turn up. The only thing was that she no longer had any idea where to look.

She closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she was simply sitting there enjoying the sunshine before going home, after a day out shopping in the fashionable stores in Church Street.

When, eventually, she arrived back at the hostel, Winnie was astonished to see a wheelchair parked in the hallway. It was bigger and more cumbersome than the one she’d had in the orphanage, but it reminded her of it. She wondered who the newcomer was and how she came to be needing a wheelchair. Perhaps because they had something in common they would become friends, she thought hopefully.

‘Is that you, Winnie Malloy?’ Miss Henshaw came bustling out into the hallway almost before Winnie had closed the front door behind her. ‘Thank goodness you are home before any of the others arrive. Will you get this contraption out of the way, it’s blocking the hall and I don’t want anybody falling over it. Move it into your room right away, you understand?’

Winnie looked at her in bewilderment. ‘It’s not mine, Miss Henshaw,’ she protested.

Miss Henshaw bristled. ‘I was given to understand that it was and that you’d asked for it to be delivered here.’

‘Delivered?’

‘That’s correct. About an hour ago. A young chap brought it. I thought from the way he spoke that you were expecting it?’

Winnie looked confused for a moment, then her face lit up. ‘Did he have red hair, and was he tall and rather good-looking?’

‘Yes, he was personable enough,’ Miss Henshaw agreed. ‘You know who it was now?’

‘That would be my friend, Sandy Coulson. Did he say anything else?’

‘No, only that you were expecting delivery of a wheelchair. I must point out that it would have been good manners on your part to warn me that it was coming,’ Miss Henshaw added.

‘I’m sorry, I didn’t really know about it,’ Winnie told her. ‘You see …’

‘Well, never mind about all that now. Move it at once! I shall expect you to keep it in your room and not use it unless you are going out,’ she warned. ‘It’s far too cumbersome to use about the place; it’s not convenient for the other residents to have to accommodate it.’

‘Very well, Miss Henshaw.’

Winnie stared at the wheelchair afresh. It looked heavy and she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to manoeuvre it. There wasn’t a great deal of space in the hallway, and if she marked the walls or scratched the paintwork she knew Miss Henshaw would be furious.

Gingerly she approached the wheelchair, wondering how she could possibly manage to get it into her room.

Miss Henshaw watched her impatiently. ‘Do
hurry
up. Look, you open the door, and since we’re in a hurry I’ll push the thing into your room, but you’ll have to learn to handle it yourself in future.’

Once the chair was safely inside her room and the door closed, Winnie examined it more carefully. It was a lot different from the lightweight one she’d used at the orphanage. However, that was all to the good, she reasoned, since she would be using this one out of doors.

She sat in it, adjusting herself so that she felt comfortable and confident before cautiously moving it backwards and forwards. She would have liked to turn it round, but she wasn’t sure if there was sufficient space in her small room.

She practised getting in and out of it several times until she could do it quite smoothly. Then she devised a way of stowing her two walking sticks down beside her so that there was no chance of them falling out of the chair or becoming entangled in the wheels.

By the time she hobbled through to the dining room for her hot supper, Winnie felt she had mastered her new wheelchair. Now all that remained was to go out in it, but that must wait until the morning.

The more she thought about what was entailed in doing that, the more apprehensive she became. She had never been on a pavement in a proper wheelchair, except when she had come from the orphanage to the hostel and Sister Tabitha had been pushing her. On that occasion, Sister Tabitha had also been the one taking the decisions about
where
and when they would cross the road.