Queen of the Mersey (34 page)

The furniture department on the floor below was the eeriest place of all. She kept expecting a figure to step out of one of the big wardrobes, or find someone asleep in a bed, or an entire family sitting around a table, eating, yet not making even the slightest of sounds. She wandered around, until fear forced her down to the third floor, where she was met by plaster mannequins; wooden-jawed men with false smiles and expressionless eyes, some exquisitely dressed, others showing off their Wolsey vests and underpants and their harlequin patterned socks, looking slightly pained at the indignity, or so Queenie thought, her imagination stretched to the limit on her nocturnal trek through the normally bustling, crowded Freddy’s, which felt so different late at night. Why she came, she had no idea, because she found it terrifying, but she was like a child in a fairground, drawn to the ghost train, yet knowing it would frighten her out of her wits.

The men’s shoes, which seemed to be floating in the air, but were in fact on a perspex stand, invisible now, could well take off any minute and tap dance around the store. This is where old Rollinson had been despatched when parted from his beloved books.

‘He needed to be taught a lesson,’ Theo had told her, much later. ‘He was getting above himself, being rude to customers if he considered them less clever than himself.’ Old Rollinson had returned to Books, a chastened man.

The second floor was Queenie’s favourite. It was where she’d foolishly asked the price of the blue costume that would have made a perfect going-away outfit when she married Jimmy. From here, the latest Parisian fashions were sold and other clothes quite beyond the pockets of the ordinary women of Liverpool – there was a whole rack of Fleur summer frocks, each costing three or four times the seven guineas Wilfred had used to charge, adding to Theo’s wealth because he had a half share in the company. These days, Wilfred Carter wafted around his London salon dressed in velvet suits and handmade shoes. Rosa had married a French man and they lived in Paris with their four children.

Outside, the sky had darkened and was now midnight blue, but the street lights were on and she could just about see the models, all alone in their little recesses on the far wall. She ran her fingers along a rack of fur coats – minks and sables, chinchillas and long-haired, wolf fur coats from Russia, slightly coarser than the rest – and wondered what trick of fate had made it possible for her to have any one of these beautiful coats, more than one if she wanted. If she hadn’t worked in Herriot’s, if she hadn’t broken her arm and had to leave Caerdovey for Southport, if she hadn’t met Laura who was responsible for sending her to Caerdovey in the first place, if Mam hadn’t abandoned her …

Which meant it was all due to Mam that she was at liberty to choose anything she fancied, because she was the mistress of the fabulously rich man who owned the shop, who had just presented her with a boat for her birthday. Though ‘boat’

hardly seemed an adequate word to describe the miniature liner that was now hers.

Yet there’d been a time when she couldn’t get a job, not even cleaning other women’s houses. The change in her fortunes was so remarkable that it worried her. If things could go so far one way, they could go the other.

There were footsteps on the stairs and she nearly jumped out of her skin. Theo came through the door in his dressing gown. ‘Queenie, are you there?’

‘Yes.’ She walked quickly towards him. ‘Oh, Theo, I’m worried everything will go wrong and one day I’ll be poor and ugly again.’

‘You silly girl,’ he said fondly, taking her in his arms. ‘I flatly refuse to believe you were ever ugly. As to being poor, that will never happen.’ He gave her a little shake. ‘I don’t understand why you wander around this place when it’s empty and so dark. You always return to me with bad thoughts.’

‘I feel drawn to it,’ she confessed. ‘I don’t know why.’

‘Next time you feel drawn to it, we’ll come together.’

‘Yes, Theo.’ She laid her head on his shoulder. They weren’t just lovers; he was also the father she’d never known, and she had taken the place of the daughters he badly missed.

Next morning, Queenie had hardly been in her office five minutes, when there was a knock, the door opened and Steven came in. She uttered a cry of delight, jumped to her feet, and they gave each other a hug.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘Oh, your father will be so pleased you’re home.’ He was the only one of Theo’s children not to give a damn when Theo had left their mother to live with Queenie. The girls had scarcely spoken to Theo since, not even Lila when he’d given her away at her wedding or attended the christenings of her own two children. The way his daughters had turned against him upset their father terribly.

Steven grimaced. ‘Yeah, but he won’t be pleased by my news.’

‘What have you done?’ she asked, dismayed.

‘I haven’t done anything yet, but next week I’m off to America – Hollywood!’ His face glowed. ‘I’ve got a part in a film.’

‘You haven’t!’

‘Don’t look so astounded, Queenie.’ He pretended to be annoyed. ‘I’m an actor, it’s what actors do. Oh, I know parts have been pretty thin on the ground so far, but not everyone becomes a star overnight. I’ve only been in the business nine years, bloody long years, as it happens, but there’s still time for me to hit the heights.’

‘Theo will miss you badly. Me, too.’ He often came to stay with them and always had the grace to visit his mother and sisters while he was there.

‘And I’ll miss you. I’ve decided that if I haven’t made it in show business by the time I’m forty, I’ll come back and be the dutiful son.’

‘I’d love you to come back, but would far rather you became a successful actor.’

He grinned. ‘That’s the perfect thing to say. Where’s Dad, by the way?’

‘In his office.’

‘I’ll go and break the news. Perhaps we could have lunch together later?’

‘I’d love that.’

Steven gone, Queenie returned to the task she’d only just started when he came, reading a list of last week’s sales of ladies’ clothing. It was important to keep track of stock, to see what had sold best, and what had hardly moved. She saw the cream linen Lanvin costume had gone and the tailored, high-waisted Dior frock, so different from his New Look that had swept the world, thrilling women with its soft, flowing lines. But now skirts were gradually getting shorter and tighter, lapels wider. Women’s fashion was a wondrous thing, unpredictable and full of surprises.

She went through the list, ticking items that would have to be re-ordered – not the Lanvin or the Dior as Theo refused to sell two identical designer garments.

‘If a woman pays eighty or ninety guineas for an outfit, it wouldn’t be fair if she met another woman wearing the same,’ he said.

The telephone on her desk rang. She stared at it for a while before answering.

It rang every Monday morning at about the same time and she knew who it would be. The strange thing was she never expected it and it always took her by surprise. She picked up the receiver, feeling sick.

‘Call for you Miss Tate,’ the switchboard operator sang. ‘Just putting you through.’

‘Did you enjoy yourself yesterday with my husband?’ Irene Vandos screeched. ‘Did you have a nice time in Wales?’

She’d had them followed again! Queenie felt even sicker. She didn’t speak, just let the woman rant on and on, telling her she was a bitch who deserved to die, that one day she would die, and it would happen when she least expected. Queenie had ruined her life. She and Theo had been happy until she appeared and spoilt everything.

The screaming stopped and she began to moan like an animal in pain. ‘I want him back. Let me have him back. Please! If you have a kind bone in your body, you will give my husband back to me.’

Still Queenie didn’t say a word. The inhuman noise was turning her stomach, but she’d learned, a long time ago when the phone calls had first started, that it was wiser to stay silent.

‘I’m going to kill myself,’ the voice said menacingly. ‘When Stephanie comes home, she’ll find me hanging from the banisters. Do you want that on your conscience, Miss Queenie Tate?’

She’d listened to this nonsense long enough. Queenie put the receiver back in its cradle. Irene had been threatening to kill herself for years, long before Theo had left. She was unstable and badly in need of treatment. Occasionally, she called back if she felt she had more to say. Queenie glared at the telephone, willing it not to ring, then gave a sigh of relief after five thankful minutes of silence. She’d never told Theo about the calls. There was nothing he could do to stop them and he’d only be upset.

Just after Christmas, Irene had turned up in the shop and created an unpleasant scene at the glove counter when told she no longer had an account with Freddy’s, something she already knew, but chose to forget. Theo had cancelled the account when it had reached four figures and not a penny had been repaid. Irene had been left a small fortune by her father and was a rich woman in her own right. Theo paid her an allowance that would have fed and clothed half of Glover Street. But it wasn’t enough. She always wanted more.

The young assistant on the glove counter had dissolved into tears, Theo had been called, and things had turned even more unpleasant. He’d been left with the choice of physically ejecting his wife from the premises, or waiting until she’d run out of steam. He chose the latter and Irene proceeded to wash his dirty linen in public. What she didn’t realise was that sympathy for Mr Theo only increased with each scene. ‘With a wife like that,’ Queenie had once heard Eustace, the lift man, say, ‘no one can blame Mr Theo, bless him, for turning to another woman.’

Queenie returned to the list, but couldn’t concentrate. She could still hear Irene’s shrill, desperate voice in her ears, and wondered if the phone calls would ever stop. She could imagine the woman on her death bed, demanding a telephone so she could abuse her husband’s ‘bit on the side’, as she’d called her once.

She felt pleased when there was another knock and Mary Monaghan’s pretty, cheerful face appeared. Mary had come to work in Freddy’s when she was sixteen and was now on the cosmetics counter.

‘Thought you’d like to know our Caradoc’s wife had her baby on Saturday,’ she said in a conspiratorial whisper for some reason. ‘It’s a boy. You’ll come to the christening on Sunday, won’t you, Queenie? It’s two o’clock at St James’s.’

‘Of course.’ She always liked to have a reason to go back to Glover Street or visit Laura and Roddy in Crosby. ‘How many grandchildren does your mam have now?

Sit down a minute, Mary. I feel like talking to someone normal.’

‘Twenty-three.’ Mary plonked herself in the chair in front of Queenie’s desk.

‘She’s thrilled to pieces. It was bedlam in our house yesterday. The whole tribe turned up. Fortunately, they brought their own food, but we had to eat in stages.’

Vera’s grandchildren, whose numbers increased regularly by two or three a year, had been her main comfort when her beloved Albert had died peacefully in his sleep five years before. The house was never without a gang of children; their mams were at work, doing a bit of shopping, having yet another baby for their fond grandma to look after.

‘Has the new baby got a shawl?’ she asked Mary. ‘What’s he going to be called, by the way?’

‘Daniel Albert. That makes three boys called after me dad. I think Iris has given Sarah an old shawl, but I’m sure she’d like a new one.’

‘We’ve some lovely hand-knitted, lambswool shawls in stock,’ Queenie said thoughtfully. ‘I’ll get Daniel Albert one of those.’

‘Will you have to pay for it, Queenie? Or do you just help yourself?’

‘No, I do not just help myself, Mary Monaghan. I pay, like everybody else.

Honestly, you haven’t changed a bit. You’re as cheeky as you ever were.

Anyroad,’ she looked at her watch, ‘what are you doing here? It’s only quarter to ten, not nearly time for lunch.’

‘I told Mrs Grim I had to go to the lavvy because I’d started a period. I only came because I thought you’d be panting to know about our Caradoc’s new baby.’

‘It’s Mrs Prymme, not Grim. Have you started a period?’ Queenie asked, trying to look stern.

‘No, when I go back I’ll say I made a mistake.’

‘Well, you’d better go back soon, otherwise she’ll come looking for you.’

‘Only if she can get someone else to look after the counter,’ Mary said pertly.

Queenie jerked her head towards the door. ‘Off you go, Mary. And don’t forget, be nice to the customers.’ It was no longer a joking matter. Mary was inclined to take advantage of the fact she’d known Miss Tate virtually all her life. She was also inclined to get impatient with customers who dithered over their purchases. The Personnel Officer, Roger Appleby, who’d taken over Miss James’s job when she’d retired, had mentioned it quite a few times.

‘Have a word with her, please, Queenie. If she doesn’t pull her socks up, she’ll lose her job. I know she’s the friend of a friend or something.’

‘She’s the daughter of a very good friend. I’ll talk to her, don’t worry.’ Vera would be dead upset if Mary lost her job.

Every few months, she was obliged to call Mary into her office and read the riot act. ‘The customer is always right. I know it’s irritating when they take for ever choosing a lipstick or deciding what shade of powder would suit them best, but you must never let your irritation show.’

‘Some of them take so long,’ Mary had replied in a pained voice the last time they’d had a confrontation, ‘I feel as if I’d like to strangle them.’

‘We make it a rule in Freddy’s never to strangle the customers, Mary.’

‘What if there’s other customers waiting?’

‘Just say nicely, “I’ll serve this other lady while you’re making up your mind.”

They’ll understand.’

‘I should hope so.’

‘Mary!’ Queenie said sharply. ‘I’m a buyer. I have nothing to do with staff. If you’re rude again and Mr Appleby decides to sack you, there’s nothing I can do about it.’ Mary gave her a look that said Queenie only had to speak to Mr Theo and she could work in Freddy’s until she was ninety. ‘I’ve no intention of asking for special favours,’ she said pointedly in response to the look.