A Liverpool Legacy (13 page)

He found that hurtful. ‘It wasn’t exactly earning, was it? It was cheating and stealing. I wanted an honest job.’

‘You were scared of being caught.’

He could see she was fulminating, and clashes of this sort turned him into a nervous wreck. He shot up Pa’s drive to the front door, jammed on the brakes, causing a spray of gravel, and escaped for a lonely tramp to the nearest pub.

James had had a bad back over the last few days. He’d had his usual breakfast tray in his room and slept a little afterwards. He got dressed and had a little lunch downstairs, but returned to his bed for a nap afterwards. By half past three, he was feeling a little better and in need of his tea. As he went downstairs, Elvira came in, slamming the front door behind her and divesting herself of her coat and hat. At the same time, Dando sailed across the hall in his stately manner, carrying the tea tray to the sitting room.

James rubbed his hands with satisfaction. ‘Ah Dando, you’ve found us a cherry cake, very nice.’

Elvira shot into the sitting room ahead of him as though there was a tornado behind her. ‘You can pour, Dando,’ she said; sometimes he left it to her.

‘I’ll have two pieces of that cake while you’re at it,’ James told him.

Dando turned to Elvira. ‘Madam?’

‘Thank you no, I don’t care for cherry cake.’ She looked angry.

‘Have you been shopping?’ That seemed to be her usual pastime.

‘No, Redwood’s sent us particulars of a very nice house,’ she said. ‘We’ve been to see it.’ She put a sheet of paper in front of him.

‘Splendid, when are you moving in?’

That seemed to upset her. ‘Marcus says we can’t afford it.’

‘I’m not surprised.’ James liked to goad her.

‘No, your firm doesn’t pay him enough.’

‘I doubt he’ll get more anywhere else. I told the accountant his salary was to be ten per cent more than the going rate for a manager. Nigel thinks it generous.’

‘But it isn’t enough to afford a house of our own. Could I make a suggestion?

‘Of course, my dear.’ He was beginning to feel riled but was still acting the gracious father-in-law.

‘Would you consider giving Marcus a few shares in the business? I mean, he’s working in it and it seems only right and fair to hand them on down the family. A share of the profit might give us enough to pay a mortgage.’

James almost choked on his cake. ‘No,’ he barked, ‘I wouldn’t. Marcus isn’t worth what he’s paid now. He’s doing damn all as far as I can see. I’ll hand on my shares when I’m good and ready.’ He gulped at his tea, feeling affronted. ‘You’ve had free board and lodging here in my house for weeks, and you’ve got the cheek to ask for more.’

Elvira leapt to her feet and left the room, leaving most of her tea in the cup.

Marcus returned that evening feeling low. He met his father in the hall on his way to the Connaught Club for his dinner. ‘My shares are mine,’ James said to him belligerently, ‘and they’re going to stay mine. I’d like to retire when you and Nigel are capable of taking over and I’ll need the payout from them to survive on my pension.’

Marcus was at a loss. ‘Has Elvira said—’

‘Yes, and I don’t want that wife of yours putting her oar in. It’s none of her business. You must keep her out of it.’

Marcus felt like groaning. He found Elvira waiting for him upstairs ready to do battle.

‘To stay here and carry on like this is pointless,’ she said angrily. ‘It’s getting us nowhere and your father wants us out. He told me so very rudely this afternoon. Come on, I’m hungry. Do you want to get changed before we go out?’

The current arrangement was that if they wished to eat an evening meal at home Elvira would buy something and cook it. Today, she’d done nothing. Marcus didn’t care whether he ate or not but she was insisting on going out. At the restaurant they usually patronised they consumed their soup in sullen silence.

When the plates had been taken away she said, ‘Well, we’ve got to do something. What is it to be?’

Marcus wanted to go to bed, he felt at the end of his tether. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘There’s nothing to stop you rejoining that auction ring. I told you I’d seen Greg Livingstone the other day. He was doing a job in Liverpool.’

Marcus was tempted but he’d been clean since coming home and working for the business, and he wanted to stay that way.

‘You’re scared,’ Elvira said disparagingly. ‘There’s nothing to worry about. You gave up nine months ago and nothing has happened since. You’d have earned enough to buy us that house if you’d carried on and we’d be in a much better position now.’ She pushed a piece of paper across to him. ‘Greg gave me this phone number. You can contact him there.’

Without a word he pushed it into the breast pocket of his suit and went on toying with his fish. It was presented on the menu as white fish which suggested nobody could name the species; it was overcooked and tasteless.

‘Will you do that?’

‘I don’t want to, it’s against the law.’

‘You’re being stupid about this,’ she said scornfully. ‘Are you enjoying working in your family’s business?’ She knew he wasn’t, he’d complained often enough about Nigel being high-handed and Millie treating him like a fool.

‘There’s only one reason to go into business and that is to make money. If it isn’t doing that for you and you don’t like working there, where is the logic in staying?’ Elvira laid down her knife and fork.

Marcus was suspicious about Elvira’s relationship with Captain Livingstone although she said he was a friend of her family. He had known him too, they’d been members of the same mess, but it was Elvira who had made the original arrangements that had allowed him to pay off his debts.

‘Where did you see Greg Livingstone?’ he asked.

‘In the Bon Marche, a department store. I was buying gloves on the ground floor and he was walking through to the lift. I went up to the men’s department with him, if you must know, and helped him buy a new dress shirt. He said he’d be glad to have you back in the ring and would find other jobs for you.’

‘I don’t want that. There must be another way.’

‘There isn’t,’ she said shortly.

Chapter Twelve

It was six o’clock on Friday when Marcus got home from work. Nigel had given him an uncomfortable afternoon in the office and he’d called in at the Sailor’s Return to help ease him into the evening. When he opened the front door, he was shocked to find a mound of Elvira’s suitcases piled up in the hall.

He rushed to the sitting room where his wife had her feet up on a footstool and was deep in a book. ‘All that luggage!’ he choked. ‘Where are you going?’

She gave him a withering look. ‘I told you last night, I’ve had enough of you and your father. I’m going home.’

Marcus stared at her with his mouth open. Last night they’d had a real set to about the discomforts of living with his father, and in a fit of temper he’d told her that it was her spendthrift ways that kept them here. If she’d saved the money from the Streatham house they’d be able to buy another now when they needed it. In return, she’d told him a few home truths about his lack of ability, but he hadn’t registered that she’d intended to leave.

‘You’re going home to your family for a short break?’

‘Don’t you ever listen? I’ve had enough of this place, I’m going for good.’

‘Elvira, no, I love you, I want you here. Just take a short break, have a rest and come back.’

‘That won’t help. I’ve ordered a taxi for half eight tomorrow morning, there’s a train at five past nine.’

‘I could run you to the station if that’s what you want, but say you’ll come back.’

‘No, Marcus, I hate this place, you do nothing but argue and complain, and your father is worse. I’ve had enough.’

He slumped into an armchair, feeling cold with horror. ‘If I can find us somewhere else to live, will you come back? This isn’t final is it?’

‘Yes it is. We’re neither of us happy. I’m on my own all day and bored out of my mind. I’m ready to call it a day.’

Marcus wasn’t bored, he felt pushed to the limit and a bag of nerves. ‘We should have accepted that flat instead of letting Nigel have it.’

‘It’s more than that, we’ve had enough of each other and we both know it.’

He felt sick, his life was a misery.

When they went to bed, he couldn’t sleep, while Elvira snored for most of the night. He was awake again when her alarm went off and aware she was dressing quickly. He sat up and tried once again to persuade her to come back after a short stay.

‘No, my mind is made up,’ she told him. ‘Either you join the ring again and earn enough for our needs, or we’re finished. If you won’t then I will join Greg’s ring, and you and your family can stew in your own juice. Have you got that? Goodbye then.’ She collected up some small bags and he heard her clattering downstairs.

Marcus rushed after her in his pyjamas and caught her as she opened the front door. ‘All right, I’ll do it,’ he said. ‘I’ll join the ring again and do a few jobs for Greg until we have enough to buy a house.’

She looked up with a triumphant smile. ‘A decent house?’

‘Yes, you can choose it, have what you want. Come back and unpack your cases.’

‘No, I’ve told Father I’m coming, so I better had.’ She was pushing her cases out on to the step. ‘But I’ll come back in a week or so if you ring the number I gave you and tell Greg you want to do a few more jobs. Bye.’

Marcus went slowly back to his bedroom and threw himself on the bed. Elvira was blackmailing him but he’d have to do as she demanded or stay here with Pa. He felt exhausted and closed his eyes, and was so lacking in energy he didn’t feel he could get dressed and go to work, not today. He’d made a life-changing decision to please Elvira but it terrified him. It was the last thing he wanted to do.

It seemed only minutes later that Elvira came bustling back into the room again. ‘Marcus, my taxi hasn’t come. I’m going to take the car, where are the keys?’

He sat up with a jerk. ‘No,’ he protested, ‘you can’t take it. I earned the money for that car.’

‘If I hadn’t made all the arrangements with Greg, you’d have done nothing.’

‘I’ll run you to the station, I said I would.’

‘You aren’t dressed yet. I’ll miss the train if I don’t go now.’

Marcus pushed his feet to the floor. ‘What does it matter? The trains to Rochdale run every hour.’

‘I’m fed up with waiting around for taxis while you breeze off every morning in the car. I’m taking it. You can try taxis for a change.’

He’d left his keys on the tallboy. He heard them rattle as she picked them up. ‘I want my car back. I’ll come and get it at the weekend.’

‘It’s my turn to have it. I haven’t had a look in up to now. Just ring that number and get started with Greg and soon we’ll have two cars.’ The door slammed behind her.

Marcus felt ready to weep. Elvira had run a little MG of her own before they’d been married. She’d written one off in a nasty accident and when the basic petrol ration for everybody was cut off completely, she’d been charged with buying petrol on the black market and her MG had been mothballed for the rest of the war. Unfortunately, Elvira had sold it before the petrol ration was restored.

Later that morning, Marcus rang for a taxi to take him to work and arranged to be collected every morning at a quarter to nine for the next week. Once in his office he found the slip of paper Elvira had given him in the top pocket of his jacket and laid it on the desk in front of him. It took him ten minutes to screw up his nerve to ask the operator to connect him.

He was scared stiff, there was no point in pretending otherwise. He was afraid they’d all be caught. Greg Livingstone couldn’t go on running a racket like this forever. Sooner or later he or one of the other dozen or so members of the ring would be caught. It was a miracle the fraud had lasted this long.

Greg was friendly enough. ‘I’ll meet you in Manchester tomorrow morning at about eleven.’ He dictated an address where an auction of surplus military vehicles was to be held. ‘There’ll be plenty of jobs to keep you busy, mostly ferrying cars from one part of the country to another.’

‘Excellent.’

‘Give me some telephone numbers so I can contact you.’

Marcus dictated his office number. ‘Be sure to ring me here,’ he said. ‘I can’t talk on the phone at home without being overheard.’

Chapter Thirteen

Elvira had been growing increasingly impatient with Marcus for the last year or so. He’d caused great concern for the others in the ring by wanting to opt out and work in that hopeless business for his father. She’d had a hard job convincing Greg that he had no intention of pulling the plug on them, and as proof she’d had to agree to doing a few jobs for him herself. She’d very quickly been drawn into the ring and found she enjoyed working for Greg. Soon she was sleeping with him too. Her life suddenly became much more interesting. She felt she was in the thick of things.

Marcus was a drag on her, a hanger-on dithering over everything, and he was scared of his own shadow. Also, he hadn’t the nerve or ability to play a major part in the work of the ring, while she could. He was stuck with the menial jobs, but what had really got her down was living with his father, he was a real pain in the neck.

She’d got to know Greg and the other members of the team during the years she’d spent as an army wife. She didn’t see her relationship with Greg as anything more than a bit of fun. He would take any woman he could get and would never be a faithful partner. What they shared was the thrill of organising the ring and making big money, and it was giving her money of her own. She had no intention of buying a house to share with Marcus. She’d had enough of marriage and had decided she’d be better off on her own. She was preparing to ditch Marcus. From now on she was going to take care of herself.

Greg was very safety conscious. ‘Marcus could be a problem,’ he told her. ‘He’s the sort that’ll collapse under pressure. He’ll tell all, land us all in trouble, if the police get hold of him.’

‘I’ll see he doesn’t,’ Elvira said.

Greg had made careful plans to ensure not only his own safety but that of the other members of the ring. He encouraged them all to send money to Spain; he meant them all to get out with as much cash as they could before any net closed round them. Mostly what they earned came in cash, and he preached to every member of the gang about taking care of it. They must not let a huge balance build up in their personal bank account, as that could attract attention to them. That would never be a problem for her and Marcus, and neither would unusually heavy spending, another thing he warned against, as that would be normal for them.

Greg had accounts in several different banks and several deposit boxes too, and he didn’t settle anywhere; he rented and moved every six months or so. He always rented at least two flats in different towns, and he changed his telephone numbers regularly. Above all, he did his best to impress on members of the team that they must not keep written records. Any instructions they had to write down must be destroyed as soon as the job was done.

Millie was fascinated by what she and the family had turned up in the unused rooms of her house. She’d learned a lot about Pete’s parents from sorting through their possessions and she found Sylvie was equally intrigued. They went back to it again at the weekend and Simon and Kenny were more than happy to join them.

The boys unearthed a box of toys in the attic and brought it down to the playroom. Soon the floor was covered with lead soldiers and the boys were setting up a battle scene.

‘These must have belonged to Dad.’ Simon was thrilled at the thought.

‘Or possibly Uncle James,’ Sylvie reminded them.

Millie sat back on her haunches. ‘You still like the same things. Children don’t change much, do they?’

‘Would Dad have looked like me when he was my age?’ Simon wanted to know.

‘Quite possibly, yes.’

That sent the children scurrying back upstairs to look for old photographs. Millie went to the kitchen to organise lunch. They were gone for some time, and she thought the hunt through old family possessions not only interested them but eased their grief. There was comfort in the thought that Pete had played with these toys. It showed them the stability of the family.

They came down when she was about to call them to eat. ‘Not many photos there,’ Sylvie said, but she produced a framed sepia print of two small boys with their parents.

‘There you are,’ Millie was delighted with it, ‘your father and Uncle James with Grandpa and Grandma.’

‘I don’t see much family likeness,’ Simon said.

‘That’s because their clothes are so different. This must have been taken … Let me think.’

‘It was taken in eighteen ninety,’ Kenny said. ‘The date is on the back.’

She turned it over; the date had been pencilled there. ‘That would make Dad about seven years old and Uncle James about four.’

Kenny said, ‘It was taken in the back garden. You can see it’s our house.’

‘The Maynard family as it was in eighteen ninety,’ Millie said.

‘They had servants then.’ Sylvie produced some postcard-size photographs. ‘Look at these people ranged behind the family. They had a housekeeper and two maids, and these two men who I think must be gardeners.’

‘The Maynards must once have been an important family,’ Simon said.

‘We still are,’ Kenny said, ‘we’ve got a factory. But why don’t we have servants?’

‘We have Mrs Brunt to do the heavy work, and Mungo to do the garden.’

‘But they aren’t proper servants, are they?’ Kenny said. ‘Are we poor now?’

‘Not as rich as we were,’ Simon said sadly.

‘Times change,’ Millie told them. ‘Nobody has servants these days because there are plenty of better jobs about.’

‘I still can’t see much family resemblance.’ Simon was once again studying the framed print.

‘Good,’ Kenny said. ‘We don’t want to look like Uncle James when we grow up, do we?’

Millie wanted to learn more about Pete’s family, and when the children were in bed that night she returned to his parents’ bedroom, but she kept turning over the things she’d already seen. She gave up and went to the study instead. She’d hardly ever come here when Pete was alive and she hadn’t used it much since. It was a darkish masculine room furnished in high Victorian style, and must have been used by his father and grandfather before him. The scent of cigar smoke still seemed to hang there though Pete had never smoked.

There was a large and heavy roll-top desk, and several cupboards in which old business files were packed tight. She blew the dust off one dated 1900 and opened it on the desk. Her interest was gripped in moments, here was the balance sheet for that year, showing a handsome profit. She took out more. Year after year, good profits had been made. She was particularly interested in the years of the Great War, and found as she’d expected that turnover fell away, but less so than in the war they’d just had. She was pleased to see it had recovered quite quickly in the years that followed.

Tiring of balance sheets, she started opening the drawers in the desk and came upon some large leather-covered notebooks. She opened one and found the pages were closely covered with writing that was small and crabbed and hard to read. It took her a few moments to realise it was a diary. The writer had not made entries every day but had recorded his or her thoughts and deeds and dated them, filling several pages at one sitting.

Millie was thrilled with her find, this was exactly what she needed; she couldn’t have asked for a better way of finding out more about Pete’s family. But whose diary was it? She knew Pete had never kept one, but it wasn’t his father’s either. She’d just seen examples of his handwriting in the business files, and he wrote in large, strong script.

On one of the flyleaves she saw the name Eleanor Mary Willis Maynard. So the diary had belonged to Pete’s mother, the mother-in-law she had never met. Millie counted the diaries, there were twelve in all and they completely filled the large bottom drawer of the desk. They were all dated. She looked through them until she found the earliest one, it was for the year 1878.

She took it, but before going to bed she went to the playroom where the children had left the albums of photographs they’d been looking at. She wanted to see what her mother-in-law had looked like.

A good-looking woman was smiling out of the sepia prints. She wore her hair piled on top of her head with a few wisps of fringe and was stiffly corseted into a wasp waist. Her wedding pictures were here. She’d been married in the family church as Millie had, but her dress had been much more ornate. Pete’s father looked young and elegant in full morning dress and he had a moustache. It had been high summer and the overdressed guests were pictured in the back garden, there was even a photograph of a five-tier wedding cake. Life, Millie mused, had been very different then.

She went to her room intending to have a long read, but she was tired and once she’d settled against her pillows she soon gave up, the writing was too squashed and tiny to decipher easily. But over the following days and weeks she dipped into them every night before she went to sleep, and found them absolutely riveting. She’d discovered that Pete’s mother Eleanor had married William Frederick Maynard in 1877 when she’d been seventeen and he twenty-six. Eleanor had written:

It is not easy starting married life under the eyes of Freddie’s father but he insisted that we live with him. It wasn’t our choice, we were looking for a small house for ourselves, but Freddie said, ‘I’m afraid we have to give in on this, poor Pa is lost without Mum and he needs you to take care of the house.’

That terrified me at the time, as I knew little about housekeeping, and he is very fussy and often finds fault with what I do. But then he doesn’t like me.

The trouble is that Freddie’s father, William Charles Maynard is a disappointed man. He wanted Freddie to marry his cousin Margaret Haskins. They grew up together and were great friends, she was the cousin whose company he enjoyed most, but he knew she was in love with someone else and he wanted to marry me.

Freddie had his way over that, but my father-in-law doesn’t approve of my family, he thinks the Willises are not in the same class as the Haskins and the Maynards. My family have been watch and clock makers for generations but modern industrial methods have put them out of business. The watches that my family designed and made by hand, piece by careful piece, and then fitted together, are now stamped out on machines and made to sell at half the price. My family are reduced to repairing the new timepieces when they go wrong. Watch repairers, Charles calls us with such a note of disdain in his voice.

His father had this dream of earning a fortune and building a great family dynasty to enjoy it. It was his aim to build up and manage a profitable business on which his family and their progeny could live in comfort for the rest of their lives, but now his life’s work is almost in tatters. He has the business and the house, but his big family has been decimated, and he is looking to me and Freddie to produce a big family and replace the generation of Maynards that has been lost.

I want babies, I would love to have a family and so would Freddie. He wants sons to follow him in the business and he wants to please his father. I come from a large family and the Willises are, to say the least, prolific. Within three months we had happy news for Freddie’s father, his first grandchild was on the way. There was such rejoicing and he started to look on me with more favour.

When Millie discovered that Eleanor was Freddie’s second wife she felt they had much in common. She could see things from her point of view and it brought the mother-in-law she’d never met closer to her. It seemed Freddie’s first wife had died of tuberculosis at twenty-three years of age without having any children.

But that night Millie read that Eleanor’s hopes were dashed.

We are all sick at heart, I have had my second miscarriage, but Freddie said, ‘Don’t give up hope, we’ll wait until you are stronger and then try again. You are still very young.’

But his father was in tears when he came to my room see me. Seeing such a proud man in tears and knowing I am the cause of it is very upsetting.

Millie knew all had eventually come right for Eleanor when she’d had Peter, and was glad she’d been able to put her miscarriages behind her.

Back in the present, things did not seem to be coming right for Sylvie. She’d always been rather shy and introverted but she’d seemed to enjoy her job in the firm’s typing pool. This was run by Miss Franklin, a spinster who looked older than her years, and who also acted as James’s secretary when he came to work. The firm started young girls there straight from commercial college, so they could gain experience before being promoted to secretary to a senior member of staff.

Sylvie had made friends among her colleagues, and went out occasionally with Louise Lambert and also Connie Grey and her brother, who worked in the production department. But she’d never had a special boyfriend and had always seemed content to spend most of her leisure time with the family.

Now suddenly she was moody and rebellious and dissatisfied with everything. Millie knew that she was grieving for Pete, and that the manner of his sudden death had been horrifyingly traumatic for her. She was hoping that in time Sylvie would get over it. She filled her weekends with trips out with Simon and Kenny, and visits to either Valerie’s home or Helen’s.

Eric had sold off some of the jewellery and both girls had done exactly what they’d said they’d do. When Millie knew there was sufficient money in Pete’s account to pay the legacies he’d willed to those of his children who had not reached their majority, she rang Mr Douglas to ask if she could expect Pete’s will to be settled now.

‘Yes, my dear, all is in order. I’ll arrange for a trust fund to be drawn up for the children and their legacies to be paid in. But the law is notoriously slow and the Probate Registry will take its time to settle your husband’s affairs as it does for everybody else. I’m afraid you’ll have to be patient for a few more weeks.’

Now her financial difficulties had been solved, Millie felt she could wait. She enjoyed her job but thought Uncle James and his sons were being difficult. They were spending a lot of time together in James’s office. James told her they were assessing the present set-up of the company and making plans, but when she’d asked him later about the plans, he evaded the question, and he never came to the lab to discuss any changes.