The Old House on the Corner (28 page)

‘Because it’s a bought house, that’s why, and now it belongs to me and our Hilda,’ Vernon sneered. ‘We’re going to sell it, the shop an’ all.’

When Ernest thought about this later, it hardly seemed fair. Surely Cuthbert’s wife, in other words Mam, had more right to the house than Vernon and Hilda? And, after all, Gaynor and Charlie were Cuthbert’s children too. It seemed to Ernest that he was urgently in need of advice. But where could he get it?

He called in the police station, but the copper on duty told him to go and piss up his kilt and stop bothering him. He asked the teacher at school, but she seemed unable to understand what he was getting at. ‘It all sounds terribly complicated, boy. You need to see a solicitor.’

Before seeking out one of these mysterious individuals, Ernest had one last try at the library where he was
well known as a keen borrower of books. He explained the situation to the woman behind the counter where the books where stamped. She was very old, with neatly waved grey hair and wire-rimmed glasses. She listened attentively, then said to a young man, also behind the counter, ‘Will you take over for a while, Mr Bright? I have to see to something.’

Ernest was taken into a little office and asked to explain everything again. When he’d finished, the woman asked if Mr Burtonshaw had left a Will. ‘It’s a document saying who would inherit things when he died,’ she explained in response to Ernest’s puzzled look.

‘Not as far as I know,’ he replied.

‘Well, in that case, the property automatically goes to his wife. His son and daughter are just trying it on. Tell your mother under no circumstances to move out. The house belongs to her. Is this the Mr Burtonshaw who ran the chandler’s in Marsh Lane?’

‘Yes,’ Ernest acknowledged.

‘Well, in that case, the shop belongs to your mother too.’

For weeks, his mam kept walking around the house touching the walls, stroking the furniture. ‘Is it really ours?’ she would ask Ernest, seeking reassurance.

‘Yes, Mam. The shop an’ all.’ The shop was being temporarily looked after by Tom Quigley, an old mate of Cuthbert’s.

‘You’re dead clever, Ernie. Me, I’d have just walked out and let them two have it.’

‘Them two’ had been round a few times, raising hell when Mam, Ernest standing staunchly at her side,
stubbornly refused to move, claiming the property was hers by rights. They hadn’t been for a while. Perhaps they’d been to see one of them solicitor people who’d told them they were flogging a dead horse.

Thelma O’Neill sidled into the chandler’s, fluttered her long lashes, and said in a cloying voice, ‘Can I have a firelighter, please, Ernie?’

Ernest put the firelighter on the counter, wrapped it in brown paper, and grunted, ‘That’ll be a halfpenny.’

‘
Thank
you,’ Thelma said in the same cloying tone. She came into the shop most days, asking for things like a single cup hook, a dishcloth, a couple of nails, stuff that never cost more than a penny. Ernest knew darn well she was after him – the firelighter was a pretty poor excuse, as it was midsummer and only someone who was stark raving mad would light a fire. ‘Are you going to the dance at the Town Hall on Saturday?’ she asked.

‘I might,’ Ernest said carelessly. He was eighteen, six-foot-two-inches tall, fair-haired, and a ‘catch’, according to Mam, because not only was he incredibly handsome, but he had his own shop and his own car – he’d learned to drive the Ford.

Ernest quite enjoyed girls chasing after him, although wouldn’t have admitted it for the world. Pretty, buxom Thelma was just one of half a dozen who came into the chandlers for a variety of reasons. Molly Regan always came to ask the time – ‘You’re the only one I know who’s got a watch,’ she would brazenly claim – and Magdalene Eaves would enquire after things he didn’t stock, always pretending to be astonished when he said that no, he didn’t have any Kellogg’s cornflakes or that week’s
Dandy
.

‘Have you seen the picture on at the Palace?’ Thelma enquired pertly.

‘Haven’t been to the Palace in a while.’

‘It’s called
Wings of the Navy
with George Brent and Olivia de Havilland. I haven’t seen it meself,’ she hastily assured him, ‘but me friend said it’s dead good.’

‘I might go and see it if I can spare the time.’ If he took a girl, it would be Magdalene Eaves, who was small and dark and prettier than Thelma by a mile. Thelma was wasting her time and money buying things from his shop.

A year later, Ernest and Magdalene were going steady and marriage was on the cards, but it was 1939 and such a major decision would have to be left until the war that was about to start was over and done with. Ernest had already received his call-up papers, had passed the medical with flying colours, and been assigned to the Royal Tank Regiment. No one doubted that the war would see Britain emerge victorious in six months’ time, possibly less.

‘We’ll get engaged when I come back,’ Ernest promised a tearful Magdalene when he bade her tara. His mam, Gaynor, and Charlie were even more tearful to see him go, although he felt sure they would manage without him – Desmond Whitely had come back into his mother’s life after the death of Cuthbert and spent a lot of time in the house in Sea View Road.

Ernest was secretly looking forward to the war. Managing a chandler’s wasn’t exactly an exciting occupation for a young man of nineteen and he quite fancied being a soldier and having all sorts of thrilling adventures. In the years to come, once he and Magdalene were married and had children, the chances were he would never leave Bootle again.

Six months later, there was no sign of the war being over and Ernest hadn’t used a weapon in anger or left the shores of the British Isles. It wasn’t until the spring of 1940 that his particular section of the Royal Tank Regiment set sail on the 14,000-mile journey around the Cape of Good Hope bound for North Africa and a place called Cyrenaica.

Their first battle against the Italians was a doddle: 130,000 of the enemy were taken prisoner, along with most of their guns and 400 tanks. As Ernest’s best mate, Ronnie Beale, put it colourfully, ‘We tore them bastards up for arse paper.’

Within a few months, Ernest was perfectly attuned to desert life. He felt almost as if he’d been born for it. The scorching heat didn’t bother him. Despite his fair colouring, his tough skin soaked up the sun, turning it a golden bronze. He enjoyed living under canvas, knowing that everything could be moved at the drop of a hat to another site, that it was only temporary. He liked the feel of the silky sand undulating beneath his bare feet. There was something strangely liberating about being able to see from one flat horizon to the other, the sky just acres of blue and not a single cloud in sight, the sun a brilliant burning ball of fire.

Ronnie Beale wasn’t so cockily triumphant when General Rommel appeared on the scene at the head of the mighty German Army and the British were driven back until all of Cyrenaica was in enemy hands. Over the next two years, thousands of men were killed in action as the battle raged back and forth, the British and their Allies advancing one minute, the Germans forcing them back and predominantly in control, until on 23 October 1942, under the leadership of General
Montgomery, British forces attacked at El Alamein and Rommel was routed.

Ernest, an old hand by now, felt lucky to be alive, having lost quite a few of his mates in the fighting, Ronnie Beale among them. By now, he had forsaken tanks for a staff car and become driver to Colonel Turlough McBride. The colonel had taken a shine to him when the company had been holed up in Tobruk. One evening, a sergeant had stuck his head into the tent where the lower ranks were eating and hollered, ‘Can any bugger here play chess?’ Ernest had put up his hand and been taken to the colonel’s tent where he was sitting staring miserably at a chessboard, the black and white figures standing idly at each side as if raring to have a go at each other.

What the colonel liked about him, he said rather stiffly after losing the first two games – Cuthbert had been a good teacher – was that Ernest, a mere private, hadn’t felt obliged to let his superior officer win.

‘Can you drive, Burrows?’ he asked after losing another two games.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘In that case, from now on, you can drive me. It’ll make a change to have someone to talk to who isn’t as servile as hell.’

Driving the colonel to and from the base camp and the scene of battle could be more dangerous than taking part in the fighting. On several occasions shots were fired at the car from a stray German tank that had inadvertently crossed enemy lines. Fortunately, they missed every time and Ernest and the colonel pretended to ignore them, Ernest merely pressing his foot on the accelerator and driving even faster, so the car
was submerged in a huge cloud of powdery sand. It didn’t make them less of a target, but they felt safer.

The colonel was forty-five and had been a soldier all his life. He had fought in the Great War to end all wars. Around his neck, he wore a purple silk scarf that had been given to him by his fiance´e, now his wife, in 1917. It was his lucky mascot and had kept him safe in two world wars. Educated at Eton, Harrow, and Sandhurst, he had a cut-glass accent and the coarsest sense of humour Ernest had ever encountered. Short and tubby with a perfectly round face and a slight squint, he always wore a heavy-weight suede jacket, despite the sweltering heat, and consumed whisky by the bottle, at least one a day, though he managed to remain in control of all his faculties.

He and Ernest got on well. They argued a lot, mainly about politics. Ernest was a solid Labour man, while the colonel was a right-wing Conservative who considered Churchill a woolly Liberal.

In the jubilation and chaos following the Allies’ magnificent victory at El Alamein, one morning Ernest was commanded to take the colonel into Cairo so he could buy another supply of whisky. Ernest loved Cairo, having spent a few days leave there a year ago and been captivated by the mysterious atmosphere, the narrow streets, the dirt and the strange smells. He’d already taken the colonel there numerous times for fresh supplies of spirits, when all he’d had to do was wait in the staff car, then carry the crates to the boot.

The same thing happened that morning and they were on their way back to base camp, the colonel already halfway through a bottle of whisky that usually lasted all day, when Ernest was startled by a shot that sounded alarmingly close, followed by another and
another. When he turned, the colonel was firing his pistol out of the rear window with a dangerously unsteady hand, an empty bottle on the seat beside him.

‘Got you, you bastard,’ he roared at the empty desert.

Ernest stopped the car. ‘Will you put that gun away, please, sir?’

The colonel laughed maniacally. ‘I’m the one who gives the orders round here, Burrows.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of giving an order, sir, I’m just asking you nicely.’

‘Oh, all right,’ the colonel said grudgingly. He withdrew his hand, dropped the pistol, bent to retrieve it, another shot rang out, and the colonel said disbelievingly, ‘I’ve shot myself in the ruddy foot!’

‘Don’t worry, sir. I’ll get you to hospital straight away.’ Calmly, Ernest started up the car and sped in the direction of base camp.

‘Turn around, you numbskull,’ the colonel screamed. ‘Take me back to Cairo.’

‘But what you need is a hospital, sir!’

‘I need medical treatment, but not in a ruddy Army hospital. I’ve just shot myself in my own ruddy foot, man. It’s not what soldiers are supposed to do. If the Army find out, I’ll be in very deep shit. Turn the ruddy car around and take me back to Cairo – that’s an order, Burrows, and if you don’t obey it, I’ll shoot you in the back of your ruddy head.’

Three hours later, the colonel was ensconced in a bed with gold brocade drapes in a sumptuous bedroom in an apartment belonging to friends whose current whereabouts were unknown – the woman who looked after the place obviously knew the colonel and
had let him and Ernest in without a murmur. Her name was Leila.

A doctor was sent for who spoke excellent English. He removed the bullet – the colonel didn’t even grimace while this was done – dressed the wound, and said he would call again tomorrow. The patient was given tablets to reduce the pain and help him sleep – he immediately took four when he’d been advised to take two, and washed them down with whisky. Minutes later, he was snoring.

Ernest left him to it and investigated the apartment that comprised the entire third floor of a magnificently gaudy building on the island of Gezira on the Nile, set like a jewel in the very heart of Cairo. There were three more bedrooms, a living room at least thirty feet long, two bathrooms – one black marble, the other cream – a dining room and a study. The door to the kitchen was open, but he didn’t venture inside: he could glimpse Leila sitting patiently at the table, probably wondering what had hit her. She was very old, her brown face a cobweb of creases.

The place was like a miniature palace: the furniture exquisitely carved, the walls covered with richly embroidered hangings and erotic paintings, the curtains made from thick ornamental silks and brocades. Giant fans rotated on the ceilings and the patterns on the mosaic floors made him dizzy if he looked at them too long. He reckoned the contents of the apartment had cost more money than he would earn in his lifetime.

Who did the place belong to? Whoever they were, they must be as rich as Croesus. The big room was full of photographs in silver frames. The same couple appeared in every one, a man and woman very alike,
middle-aged and elegantly dressed, accompanied by other couples who were never the same. He found one of the colonel with a stout woman wearing layers of floating lace, the elegantly dressed couple either side of them. All four were linking arms.

What was he supposed to do with himself now? He couldn’t very well abandon the colonel and return to base on his own – not that he felt the faintest inclination to do so. He liked being where he was and decided to go for a walk around Cairo. After a double dose of sleeping tablets, it would be ages before the colonel returned to the land of the living.