Mourning Doves (16 page)

Winnie returned the kiss and the hug. ‘You take good care of yourself, Miss.’

As she reluctantly let Celia go, the cook felt that they both had their problems. She told herself that she wouldn’t, for the world, like to have Miss Celia’s worries. What’s going to be left for her when she’s as old as I am? At least I can cook. Somebody’ll be glad of me.

A long empty furniture pantechnicon backed cautiously away from the cottage’s new front gate and, after its wheels had flung up a flurry of sand in all directions, it began its journey back to Liverpool to fetch another load which would, this time, be delivered to Aspen’s Building Contractors in Hoylake.

In the Liverpool house, Louise and Edna were supervising the dispatch of the furniture, and in the Hoylake cottage Celia and Betty were dealing with its reception and the placing of each piece of furniture. By this time, Celia and Betty were fast friends, and Betty had begged a few hours off from her father, in order to help Celia.

All carpets, pictures and mirrors required in the new home had, two days before, been moved in a smaller van, and the carpets laid by the removal men, as directed by Celia. Much to Louise’s horror, Celia had travelled in the van with them to the cottage. Later that day, Louise and Edna had come out to Meols to help to hang curtains and pictures, despite the fact that two men were still working in the bathroom and that the frames of the back windows would not be replaced for another week. A gaping hole where the old kitchen range had been awaited the attention of a plasterer. Such was Celia’s fear, however, of the financial drain of the maintenance of the West Derby house that she pressed her mother ruthlessly to move without delay.

None of the women realised how much effort Betty had made to get the work done quickly. She had persuaded her
father to give it priority, and had harried the foreman into putting their two best plumbers on the job. It was these two men who, in the late afternoon, came downstairs to say that everything was connected, and that the ladies could now have the water turned on.

This was solemnly done and the taps allowed to run.

As soon as the men had left, there was a rush to use the lavatory.

The plumbers had tidied up, but both sink and bath needed to be scoured.

‘What shall we do?’ wailed Louise.

‘Clean them,’ snapped Edna. She immediately went down to the kitchen to find rags and scouring powder and then, rather clumsily, went to work. The result was not very good. Her mother complained, and was met with pained silence.

Supervised by an irate Louise, who refused to actually do anything on the grounds that she was too heartbroken, Celia and Edna had spent the rest of the day inexpertly hammering nails into newly painted walls and hanging the pictures and mirrors wherever they saw fit; their mother, when asked, had gloomily refused to be interested in where they were hung, so, where possible, they hung them in the same rooms that they had been in in the Liverpool house.

Celia had remarked to Edna that it was a relief to be rid of most of the dirty old oil paintings that had graced the walls of the Liverpool house, and have only watercolours to look at. ‘Except, of course, for the two oils I’ve just put here in the living room with the Landseer etching; Mother dotes on them.’

‘Well, it’s her home,’ Edna replied. ‘If that’s what she wants …’

A little stab of fear went through Celia. The cottage belonged, indeed, to her mother – not to either Celia or Edna. She felt that, in future, she should never forget that fact.

Now, as the huge pantechnicon bumped safely on to the main road after delivering the furniture, Celia surveyed the little living room they had created, and declared to Betty, ‘I don’t think I would have ever been able to achieve this without your support, Betty. You’ve been such a help.’

Betty was tucking the dining chairs further under the table, to give a little more room for moving about. She made a mock bow. ‘My pleasure,’ she said. ‘It’s been the first fun I’ve had since the war. Even Dad’s got interested in it, and he’ll see the spare furniture properly stored so that it isn’t damaged.’

‘He’s wonderful – so kind. In fact, everybody I’ve met in Hoylake has been so nice to me – and patient with Mother.’

‘You’re a pleasure to deal with – and your mam isn’t any different from other women left in the same predicament – there are thousands of them – they just don’t know things, that’s all. If you can explain simply to them, they usually see the common sense of what you’re suggesting. And your mam is no exception.’

‘Well, you went far beyond the cause of duty, when you came over to Liverpool and went through the house with her to tell her what would fit here and what would not. She would never have accepted my word for it that you can’t get a wardrobe built for crinolines into a cottage!’

Betty laughed. ‘And the old-fashioned night commode that she had in her bedroom?’

It was Celia’s turn to laugh. ‘She only gave in because you could measure that the distance from her new bedroom to her new bathroom was less than walking across her present bedroom to use the awful old thing!’

Her mind turned to the dire need to sell some of the furniture, and she asked, ‘Will your father mind, Betty, if I bring prospective purchasers into his barn to show them the pieces for sale?’

‘Not him. The gates are open from 7 am to 6.30 pm,
anyway; and it will be a bit of an advertisement for him.’

‘Let’s sit down and have a cup of tea, while we wait for Mother and Edna,’ Celia urged. ‘They are bringing all the personal luggage that they didn’t want to give to the movers.’

‘Jewellery?’

‘Yes – and furs and silverware.’ She remembered something else for which she had to thank Betty. ‘Remember sending me to see Mrs Jowett, in Liverpool – the lady with the antique shop?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, once she heard your name, she was really helpful about pricing the furniture. At first, she wanted to come out and buy herself. But I did exactly as you advised me – I told her that I wanted to sell it myself, so that I made the most money. She didn’t make fun of me – just said it was sensible. She’s lent me a pile of magazines, and a list of Victorian furniture and what is a reasonable price for it – if it’s in good condition. And two books on eighteenth-century furniture.’ She patted the well-worn tomes sitting on the table in front of her. ‘She said she was not an expert on eighteenth-century pieces; though since I know their origins – provenance, she called it – she assured me that I can probably get good prices for them.’

She smiled reflectively at the memory of the old Jewess, who had, in the course of an hour, tried to pass on to her a lifetime of experience in the trade. Then she went on, ‘She told me that big pieces take time to sell these days – new houses – and flats – are smaller than pre-war ones – and there isn’t the space for heavy furniture.

‘She also said a lot of well-to-do people are closing their town houses and renting a flat instead, so that’s brought more old furniture on to the market. But, you know, Betty, a lot of Mother’s furniture is early Georgian and quite dainty.’

Betty nodded agreement. ‘She’s right. Dad’s got one or
two jobs where he’s making big houses into flats – houses like yours, in Liverpool, and the ones on Meols Drive in Hoylake.’

While the kettle for tea heated on the fire, they went slowly through the lobby and hall, both of which were newly painted cream; and the sunlight caught the glass door which Celia’s grandmother had loved so much, and reflected the pretty design on to the wall.

In the hall hung some of her mother’s favourite watercolours. Under their feet lay part of the good Brussels stair carpet from the West Derby house. The stone floor of the back room, to which they now slowly returned, boasted the Turkey carpet from the old dining room; it had been cut to fit the smaller room. Louise had said crossly that it was pure sacrilege to hack at such a beautiful carpet, but she had insisted on bringing it, so that was what Celia had arranged.

The red velvet curtains from the same room had been shortened by a local seamstress to fit the little windows. In the struggle to hang both pictures and curtains, the weary sisters had snapped and snarled at each other and argued with their mother.

In one case, Louise had suddenly decided she did not like the curtains in the front bedroom which was to be hers, and they had to take them down and put them in Edna’s room. Edna did not like them either, but lost the battle.

It had been the most tiring two days that Celia ever remembered. Her shoulders and back had ached unbearably during the night.

By the time the three women had caught the train back to Liverpool, they were barely on speaking terms. The following morning, however, Edna, usually so silent, had asked Celia if she would rub her back with surgical spirit because it ached so badly. Celia agreed.

When she lifted her sister’s shift in order to apply the
embrocation, she had been shocked at the incredible thinness of her. Her shoulder blades stuck out and her backbone looked like a knotted cord.

As she banged the cork back into the surgical spirit bottle, Celia asked, ‘Are you well, Edna? You are too thin.’

‘I am perfectly well, thank you. I am simply unused to having to work like a servant.’ The tone did not brook a response, so Celia turned away; she herself had, in the previous month, done much more than either of the other two women, but she had not lost weight.

Now a fire, built by Celia according to Dorothy’s careful instruction, blazed in the old-fashioned cottage grate which had been well burnished with black lead.

Dorothy is a professional when it comes to cleaning, thought Celia with a sigh, as she set out teacups on the table, and I will never be as good.

The division of domestic responsibilities had yet to be discussed, and Celia had automatically assumed that most of the work would be piled on to her shoulders.

‘Dorothy’s going to come in some time tomorrow, to clean out the garden shed,’ she told Betty. ‘It’s got shelves on which we can store all the trunks.’

‘That’ll be a help,’ Betty replied. She wondered grimly who would be the first woman to get up the following morning and make the living-room fire. Probably poor old Celia, she decided.

At that moment, Dorothy was busy cleaning the rapidly emptying house in West Derby, and Winnie was supervising the removers, while she also wielded a broom. Dorothy was not very happy about her new job as the only servant in a home, but she reckoned it would do until she got something better.

She had leaped at the chance of coming out to the cottage once more. She had always prided herself on knowing a good man when she saw one, and she had welcomed the
possibility of meeting Eddie again. She had told Winnie that he was elderly – but not old – and a real nice fella.

Winnie wished her well, and wondered if the Missus would mind if she herself continued to sleep for a few extra days in her attic bedroom. After some thought, she decided that Mrs G. would probably never find out that she was there. If the estate agent called, she could always tell him that, in order to deter vandals, Mrs G. wanted her to stay until the house was sold. As she stolidly swept bare boards, ready for Dorothy to scrub them, she felt some relief at the idea of gaining a few more days’ respite from wandering the streets looking for cheap accommodation while she continued her hunt for a job.

To this end, when packing up the contents of the pantry ready for transfer to the cottage, she had carefully segregated some of the large store of dry goods and hidden them in one of the cellars, where also lay at least a couple of hundredweight of coal which was not worth moving. If absolutely necessary, and if the house took time to sell, she could exist for a number of weeks, she planned, on porridge, potatoes, a little barrel of eggs preserved in isinglass, on bread she would bake for herself and on any scraps left over after the family had left.

Winnie had dealt honestly with the Gilmores during all the years she had been with them. But now, deeply resentful of Louise’s indifference to the plight of her servants, she knew she must secure her own survival. If she could not get a job, her only resource would be the workhouse, and she shuddered at the very idea of being reduced to that.

In the Gilmores’ new home, the removal men had placed the furniture under Celia’s direction. It still needed a little adjustment, but the general effect was so friendly that Betty sank into a chair with a contented sigh, and said, ‘It looks lovely, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes!’ Celia did a small dancelike twirl round the centre
table, and came to rest by Betty. ‘And you did it!’ She put her arms round her new friend and kissed her.

Betty said firmly, ‘No. I didn’t. I simply encouraged you and Mrs Gilmore.’ She smiled up at Celia. ‘All the pair of you needed was confidence. Between the two of you, you put it all together; and Dad won’t send his bill until the end of the month – I’ll see to that!’

Celia laughed; she was worried about money, but was sure that, once the Liverpool house was sold, everything would be all right.

Betty asked, ‘What about Mrs Fellowes?’

Celia sighed. Before she answered, she took the lid off the teapot and took down a tea caddy from the mantelpiece. As she carefully measured the tea into the pot, she said slowly, ‘Well, Mother has encouraged Edna to come to live with us. So she’s going to have the back bedroom, next to the bathroom – and we have put into it most of the furniture from the bedroom she had as a girl. Her own furniture will arrive eventually from South America – all beautiful and hand-turned, according to her – so, if Mr Aspen is agreeable, we’ll put that into your barn until she is certain about where she will live.’ She reached for the kettle which had come to the boil and poured the water on to the tea. Then, as she stirred it, she considered her sister.