Queen of the Mersey (61 page)

‘The good memories have taken over the bad,’ Queenie murmured. ‘I’m really glad we went.’

An advert was inserted in the Echo introducing Freddy’s’ new furniture department. It included pictures of a Stag bedroom suite and a streamlined G-Plan three-piece. A ten per cent discount was offered to customers who bought within the first week, though a few pointed out that other shops were offering the same furniture at less than Freddy’s, even when taking into account the ten per cent reduction. Queenie sent a spy to George Henry Lee’s, who reported it was true. ‘And they have a policy of refunding the difference if the same goods are found cheaper elsewhere.’

‘Then we’ll adopt the same policy.’

In the restaurant, two cream teas were offered for the price of one on Saturdays. Different types of coffee were now on the menu, as well as herbal teas, doughnuts, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, milkshakes and – Theo would have turned in his grave had he known – beef burger in a bap with chips.

Sales figures increased, but not enough to guarantee the shop’s survival in a more and more competitive world. It wasn’t easy to change people’s perception of Freddy’s being a place where only the rich and elderly came to shop. Queenie considered going downmarket, but Theo wouldn’t just turn in his grave, he’d swivel.

News of Freddy’s possible demise must have filtered through to the business fraternity as an offer was received from a firm of developers who wanted to demolish the building and erect a multi-storey car park in its place, subject to planning permission, of course. Queenie hadn’t yet answered.

Now it was June. If things didn’t improve soon, she’d close the shop at the end of the year with the biggest, most spectacular sale of all time. Freddy’s wasn’t going to go out with a whimper, but with an extra-loud bang.

June was the birthday month. It ended with Queenie, Hester and Mary one year older. It was also twelve months since Theo had died.

I haven’t mourned him, Queenie thought sadly. It’s been such a strange, emotional year, what with Hester’s baby, the visit to Caerdovey, the worry over Freddy’s and, most importantly of all, Roddy. I’ve hardly thought about Theo at all. And now she was forty-nine and having a baby seemed an impossible dream.

‘It’s time we got married,’ Roddy reminded her. They were sitting on the tiny settee in his flat watching the sun slowly disappear into the black horizon while the river changed from silvery grey to dull pewter. A dark shadow swept over the buildings in front, as if they’d been covered with a layer of black lace.

‘Could we leave it until the New Year, till Freddy’s has closed?’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Freddy’s is closing?’

‘It’s become a case of when, rather than if.’

‘Are you sure you’re not just putting it off? I’m talking about getting married, not closing the shop.’

She dug him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Of course not. I’ll enjoy our wedding much more with Freddy’s and all its problems behind me.’ She wasn’t putting it off, though there remained a thread of doubt that she was doing the right thing.

They had agreed they weren’t in love, that the sex was bloody marvellous, that they were the very best of friends, yet still Queenie had hesitated before agreeing to get married. She couldn’t quite put her finger on why. Perhaps, she thought with a wry smile, her mind was unable to accept the fact she would become Mrs Roddy Oliver.

‘Can we at least go public?’ Roddy asked. ‘I feel stupid, sneaking about the way we do. I want everyone to know we’re a couple.’

‘What will Hester think?’ she asked.

‘Knowing Hester, she’ll be as pleased as punch.’

But Hester already knew. ‘Mary and I guessed ages ago,’ she said with a laugh.

‘All of a sudden, you started to treat one another very coolly. You hardly spoke. At first, we thought you’d had a major row. Then we realised what had actually happened and were really glad.’

‘See, I told you she wouldn’t mind.’ Roddy smiled fondly at his daughter.

‘As if I’d mind! I’m thrilled to bits. If there’s one woman in the world I’d like you to marry, it’s Queenie.’ She gave Queenie a hug. ‘You’ve always been part of our family, anyway.’

Duncan came home from work, ate his tea, picked up the Radio Times, and planted himself in front of the telly. This was the pattern his life had taken since Flora had left home. He opened the magazine and began to peruse that night’s programmes.

Duncan wasn’t a complicated person. He couldn’t ‘put on a face’, as Mam used to say. When he was unhappy, it showed. Mary remembered when they’d first got married, the way he’d mooched around the flat in Waterloo looking as if he was about to be executed.

He’d been happy when Flora had come along and had stayed that way until she left. She was his favourite person, his favourite topic of conversation, and now she had gone and he was as miserable as sin. Mary couldn’t think of a way of making him happy again, apart from producing another Flora, something unlikely to happen, as they hadn’t made love since his daughter’s exit from the house.

‘Shall we go to the pictures?’ she asked brightly.

‘No,’ he grunted.

‘What about going out for a drink? It’s ages since we last went to a pub.’

‘Don’t feel like it.’

She regarded him impatiently. She was upset herself that Flora had moved out.

She adored her daughter, but there was no denying she was a selfish, thoughtless girl – Mary couldn’t bring herself to even think the word bitch. She hardly ever came home, she was enjoying herself too much to waste her precious time with her parents. When they went to visit, she made no secret of the fact they were in the way. ‘It’s dead embarrassing, Mam,’ she hissed on the last occasion. ‘None of the other girls’ mams and dads come round.’

‘Then we won’t come again,’ Mary had said huffily, and Duncan had complained all the way home that it was no way to speak to his beloved Flora.

What made things worse was that he’d suddenly remembered he had a son. Chris had been dead amused when his father had started to ask his opinion on this and that, inviting him to football matches and the like.

‘Why don’t you ask Flora?’ he’d said pointedly the other Saturday when Duncan suggested they go to Manchester to see the cricket. ‘Me, I’m not interested in any sort of sport. Actually, Dad, I never have been.’

The sarcasm was lost on Duncan. He complained to Mary about Chris’s attitude. ‘I don’t think Chris likes me very much,’ he said, looking hurt.

‘Have you only just noticed?’ Mary said acidly. ‘For most of Chris’s life, you’ve ignored his existence. You didn’t even know he doesn’t like games. Now you want to be a father with a capital F, but it’s too late. He’s an intelligent boy, Duncan, he can see right through you.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’

‘He knows you’re only interested in him because your darling daughter’s no longer around. Anyone with half a brain would understand that.’ Perhaps she should be trying to buck him up, rather than take him down, but he was getting on her nerves too much for that.

Chris was turning out to be remarkably clever. He reminded her of Gus Oliver, his head always buried in a book on some obscure subject like philosophy or astronomy. Duncan and Gus had got on like a house on fire. She just hoped one of these days Duncan and Chris might do the same.

He was changing channels on the telly. You’d never think he was an educated man from his choice of programmes. He went for the loudest and the brashest, usually games shows. If it wasn’t hosted by Bruce Forsyth, then it was Bob Monkhouse or Nicholas Parsons.

Mary felt bored. She’d go and see Hester if she hadn’t already been twice that week. It seemed pathetic when she had a family of her own. The house in Crosby was always full of Ned’s weird friends, and if they weren’t spouting poetry, they were singing revolutionary songs, discussing the next march to go on, and smoking pot. Despite Hester being five months pregnant, she and Ned had taken Evan to a Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament demonstration the week before.

It all seemed terribly irresponsible, but she wouldn’t have minded swapping Hester’s life for her own.

It was September and time Queenie broke the news about Freddy’s to the staff.

They had noticed that only half the usual amount of winter stock had been ordered and were asking questions. She should have told them before. She had a letter duplicated, and addressed and signed each one personally. It took ages; she kept pausing, visualising the faces as she wrote down the names, some bringing back their own particular memory.

‘Dear Judy’, ‘Dear Gladys’, Dear Joe’, … Joe Parker had been the doorman when she first came to Freddy’s, only a young man then. Henry Quinn had taken over the main lift when Eustace had left. Dear Eustace was long dead, and so was old Rollinson who’d stayed in his beloved book department until he was nearly seventy.

‘Dear Bob’, ‘Dear Alf’, Dear Marie’. She was surprised by how many staff were already there when she’d started. Quite a few of the women had come as young girls, left to get married, then returned after their families had grown up.

Freddy’s closure would make a big hole in an awful lot of lives, as it would have done her own, but not now that she was getting married to Roddy and starting a completely new life.

She paused again. The wedding was on 5 January and they were spending their honeymoon in the villa in Kythira. Roddy didn’t mind that it was the place she’d always gone with Theo. He was longing to see it, she’d talked about it so much over the years. Queenie couldn’t wait.

Her letter was met with a mixture of resignation and anger. Most people understood that Freddy’s had no future, but a minority thought she should fight on. Keith Hull who worked in Carpets came storming into her office. ‘Why don’t you become a limited company, float on the stock exchange, get people to invest?’ he demanded.

‘I went into that,’ she told him. ‘I was advised Freddy’s would be a most unattractive investment and too much money would have to be spent to make that change. The bottom line is that we’re too out of the way to make it a worthwhile proposition.’

And Theo had always been dead set against Freddy’s becoming a limited company.

The shop was his. He didn’t want to risk it being taken out of his control, as had happened with Harrods, when Hugh Fraser had ousted the Burbridge family who had run the shop for seventy years.

‘In that case I’m leaving.’

‘I’ll be sorry to see you go, Keith.’

‘I won’t be the only one,’ he said threateningly, slamming the door behind him.

So long as too many didn’t leave before the end of December, it didn’t matter.

Over the remaining twelve weeks, departments would shrink as the goods were sold. She wanted to disguise the shrinkage by moving sections closer to each other so the shop didn’t look bare. As a start, half the fourth floor was about to be closed off. They wouldn’t need so many staff. Keith wouldn’t be missed.

Hester was making the bed when she felt the pain. It wasn’t a contraction, but as if someone wearing heavy boots had landed a kick on her stomach. She gasped, clutched her stomach, and sat heavily on the bed. The baby wasn’t due until the end of November, four weeks away. Evan gurgled at her from his little bouncy chair that she carried from room to room while she did the housework so they could talk to each other. At ten months he could crawl and wasn’t safe to be left alone.

‘What on earth was that?’ she asked him.

He gurgled an answer and she told him he was being no help. ‘I think your little brother or sister might be arriving early.’

Evan grabbed his feet and shrieked with laughter.

She didn’t feel like laughing back when the heavy boots landed another kick, even fiercer than the first. A few minutes later, she felt a rush of warmth between her legs, thought her waters had broken, but when she stood up noticed the bed was stained with blood. She’d had a haemorrhage! She began to panic. Ned was in the middle of his round and could be anywhere. She should call for an ambulance, but first had to find someone to mind Evan. Next door would all be at work, and the old lady on the other side was very old, in poor health, and not up to it, and she herself wasn’t up to running up and down the road, knocking on doors asking people if they’d look after her precious baby. She remembered Mary only lived five minutes away. Picking up the phone beside the bed, she dialled her number, but it rang out for ages and there was no reply.

‘What do I do now?’

Hester picked up the phone again and dialled Freddy’s. When the operator answered, she asked to speak to the woman who’d been like a second mother to her virtually all her life.

Queenie listened intently to Hester’s hysterical voice. ‘Call an ambulance immediately,’ she said. ‘Where is Evan now? Right, well, put him in his cot if you can manage it. If not, leave him where he is. He’ll be quite safe in his chair until I arrive. I’ll get a taxi and tell the driver to hurry. Good luck, Hester, love.’

She slammed down the phone, grabbed her coat, and told the woman in the next office to ring for a taxi. ‘Tell them it’s an emergency and I’ll be outside Freddy’s main door.’

The taxi driver took her at her word and drove like a maniac all the way to Crosby. She gave him double the fare, and saw she was just in time; an ambulance was parked outside the house and Hester was being carried out on a stretcher, her face pale and tight with pain.

‘Thank God you’re here.’ She grabbed Queenie’s hand. ‘Evan’s upstairs, crying. I nearly brought him with me, but I knew you’d come.’

‘I’ll see to him, darling. Don’t worry. Will she be all right?’ she asked the stretcher bearers, both men.

‘Let’s say the sooner she gets to hospital the better,’ one of the men said grimly.

The ambulance drove away. Barely a minute later, Queenie was in the bedroom where Evan was bawling his eyes out. He stopped as soon as he saw her and began to chuckle and wave his arms about.

‘You little rascal! You had your poor mummy dead worried. Would you like a clean nappy? Let’s find out where they’re kept. and don’t you dare start crying again while I look,’ she said sternly.

She found the nappies in the airing cupboard. Evan fought her all the way while she changed him. She took him downstairs, made tea, gave him some in his own special cup half-filled with milk, then sank on to the settee, pleased to see a fire burning brightly behind the old-fashioned fire guard. Her hands were shaking. As soon as she’d finished the tea and felt calmer, she’d try to get in touch with Ned, then ring Roddy.