A Liverpool Legacy (22 page)

It was so cold that she leaned against the lukewarm radiator under the window that overlooked the car park while they decided to keep the old shape and the flower picture but have it against a pale cream background. Dan and Albert had got as far as discussing the wording for the logo they’d have printed on the tins when a movement outside caught Millie’s attention.

It was less than an hour since she’d seen Marcus arrive but now he was heading back to his car. He got in and started the engine. Hastily she excused herself and ran down to the car park, meaning to follow him to see where he was going. She jumped in her car and as she drove out on to the road she could see he’d been held up at the traffic lights some hundred yards further along.

She blessed the fact that he’d acquired such a fancy car. He was easy to follow because traffic was light and most of the cars were black and of pre-war shape, as was her own. That allowed her to stay some distance behind him as she didn’t want Marcus to see her. He was heading into the centre of Liverpool. She decided he must definitely be working for someone else and he didn’t want her to know.

She found he’d parked his car near Exchange Station and was heading inside. He had no luggage so was he meeting somebody off a train? Hurriedly she parked her car well away from his and made her way into the station.

There were a lot of people about so it wasn’t as easy to pick him out now, and she didn’t want him to see her before she saw him. Yes, there he was buying a ticket, so where was he going? She hung back watching him from a distance. He bought a newpaper and then headed towards one of the platforms. She saw him get on the train that was waiting there. It would take him to Southport or any of the many stations on the way.

She went back to her car feeling she’d learned precious little. She couldn’t imagine what he intended to do in Southport. It was definitely not the weather for a trip to the beach.

All morning it grew darker and the heavy cloud developed a yellowish tinge. Millie kept a watch on the car park but Marcus’s car did not return. Immediately after lunch it began to snow, and as it was settling on the ground and building up on the roofs, Millie saw it as yet another problem. She rang the bus depot to see if the buses were continuing to run, because that was what Pete had done in the past. When she heard that they were still running but there was some doubt as to how long they could continue, she went to see Nigel and suggested they close the factory and office early and let the staff get off home.

‘I agree,’ he said, locking up his desk. ‘It looks quite nasty. Better if we get off home while we can.’ He made all haste to do that, leaving her to tell everybody else. Millie did so, going slowly along the corridor of offices occupied by their senior staff.

When she reached Andrew Worthington’s office, she found Sylvie there taking dictation. He said, ‘You go, Sylvie, there’s nothing urgent amongst those letters.’

‘Thanks, Mr Worthington.’ She closed her notebook.

Millie said, ‘You haven’t chosen a good day to go home with Denis, the buses will stop running if this carries on.’

‘Mum! Please don’t stop me now.’ Sylvie was keen to go. ‘I’ll be all right.’

Millie went to the window, it was snowing heavily and the sky was now pewter grey and leaden. ‘It’s not much after three o’clock and look at this. What will it be like by nightfall? What if you can’t get home?’ She glanced up to find Andrew’s dark green eyes watching her sympathetically.

‘I’ll walk if I have to. What does Denis say?’

‘Nothing to me, why would he?’ Millie didn’t want to discuss Sylvie with Denis. She felt what they did was their business and preferred to wait until she was told.

‘I’ll go and talk to him now. Goodnight, Mr Worthington.’ Sylvie sped towards the lab while Millie followed at a more leisurely pace.

When she caught them up, Denis said, ‘Please let her come, Mrs Maynard. My mother . . . Well, she was going to bake.’

Millie hesitated. ‘She’ll have gone to a lot of trouble, won’t she?’

‘I’ll see her to your door, I promise.’ He looked so intense, so full of hope that she knew she couldn’t say no. ‘I’ll make sure she gets home safely.’

‘All right, but early please. This isn’t a night to be out late.’

‘Thank you, thank you.’ Both were all smiles now and went off together.

Millie slumped on to her desk chair. Moments later she heard footsteps coming up the lab.

‘I take it you agreed?’ It was Andrew. ‘I saw them rushing off together in great excitement.’

‘I hope I’ve done the right thing.’

‘I’m sure you have. They’re old enough to be responsible for what they do. You can’t look after Sylvie for the rest of your life.’

‘No, I hope I don’t have to.’

‘You’ll be on your own at home tonight.’

She nodded. ‘Yes.’

‘That’s what I thought, I’m glad I’ve caught you. Why don’t you spend the evening with me? We’ll have a drink and then a meal.’

Millie was taken aback. She hadn’t been out with a man for years, not on a prearranged evening date. She was a grieving widow.

He said, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you for ages, and if you’re to be alone tonight this seems a good time to do it. After all, I enjoyed your hospitality on bonfire night; you must allow me to ask you out in return.’

She smiled. ‘Thank you, I’d like to go out with you.’ For once she felt a bit shy of him but reminded herself that Andrew was a colleague, so it wasn’t like a real date. ‘It’s not much fun waiting alone for a teenage daughter to return home.’

‘Well, I’ve already arranged to have a drink with Jeff Willis at the Sailor’s Return, across the road, so I’ll need to take you there first. But you know him.’

‘Yes, I like him, talking to him is always interesting.’

‘Then you and I will go on for a meal afterwards.’

Millie went to the window. The snow was still swirling down. She could see the Sailor’s Return on the other side of the shabby street, though she’d rarely been inside. At street level it had the usual rather noisy bar but upstairs was a large lounge where in cold weather an open fire roared up the chimney. Pete had occasionally had a drink there with one or other of the managers and said he thought the premises had been arranged to attract the local workforce. They certainly patronised it in large numbers.

‘I need ten minutes to clear my desk and lock up for the night,’ he said.

‘So do I, but I won’t be ready then, I told Tom Bedford I’d make sure the whole place was secured for the night.’

‘OK. Give me ten minutes and I’ll come back and walk round with you,’ Andrew said. ‘I ought to know how to lock the place up.’

For the first time, Millie really thought about Andrew. She’d been accepting his support and advice for some time and counted him a friend, but she knew virtually nothing about him. Pete had been impressed with his war service but she’d not asked, and he’d volunteered little. She should have shown more interest.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Andrew had been spending a lot of time thinking about Millie and felt he’d taken a great step forward in persuading her to spend the evening with him. By the time they were crossing the road, it was really dark and the snow was four inches deep. He took her arm as it was rutted and slippery. ‘I hope this isn’t going to stick on the streets for days,’ he said.

The pub lounge was a warm and cheery place and he recognised some of the customers as Maynard’s staff, despite being released to go home early on account of the weather. Andrew saw his friend waiting for him in front of the fire.

‘Good, you’ve brought Millie with you.’ Jeff beamed at her. ‘Come and get a warm, Millie. How are you?’ He settled her in the chair nearest the blaze and Andrew went to get their drinks.

It pleased him that they seemed to have plenty to say to each other but when he returned and put the glass of lemonade she’d asked for in her hand, it brought the flow to a halt.

Andrew said, ‘I believe I owe my life to Jeff,’ and that started Jeff telling her how they’d escaped from Singapore together when it fell to the Japanese. Andrew had not enjoyed the experience but Jeff had relished it and was happy to sit back and talk.

His huge bulk overhung the chair. Millie smiled at him. ‘Pete told me about your wartime experiences, he was very impressed. I gather you had an exciting time.’

‘I wouldn’t describe it as exciting,’ Jeff said drily. ‘We were on the run from the Japanese for ten months. We had to go native and live on the beach.’

‘I was terrified most of the time,’ Andrew told her. ‘I wouldn’t have survived on my own.’

Jeff was beginning to hold forth. ‘When the British surrendered, we decided we’d rather make a run for it than be rounded up and sent to Changi prison for the duration.’

‘Yes, I and my friend Graham had made all sorts of preparations, drew out money from the bank, and packed a few clothes. We’d seen the European civilians scrambling to get out but we left it too late.’

‘His friend Graham was killed.’ Jeff’s voice was matter-of-fact.

Millie looked appalled. ‘That’s terrible, how did it happen?’

‘To start with we tried to get passages to a British port but the liners had all left by then, so had all the freighters, filled to capacity. We met up on our first night when we all hid in the same warehouse on the quay. Jeff speaks a little Malay and negotiated with several hundred cigarettes and treble the standard fare to get all three of us as deck passengers on a local junk bound for Jakarta.’

Jeff took up the tale. ‘We cast off in a hail of shells and small-arms fire, but the master was determined that nothing would stop his vessel leaving. A bullet caught Graham in the back of his head and he collapsed at our feet, there was nothing we could do for him. He wasn’t the only one, two other passengers and a sailor were also killed, and several were injured. Once out to sea the master ordered his crew to throw the bodies overboard.’

That had been the first time Andrew had been under fire and experienced deadly danger. His neck had crawled with fear and he’d been very glad of Jeff’s support. He felt sick as he remembered how he’d done his best to say a prayer over his friend before his body was committed to the sea. He’d had to write to Graham’s parents after he’d got home and that had been painful too. Jeff had more stoicism, though they’d had little to say to each other that day. They didn’t find out they both came from Liverpool for some time.

‘It was not a luxury voyage,’ Jeff said, sitting back with his glass of beer in his hand. ‘There were twelve other deck passengers, mostly Malays and Chinese. At night it was cold and we lay down on deck to sleep under an old sail. During the day we were hot and sweaty and had nothing but a bucket of seawater to wash in and there was little shelter from the hot sun, but we had enough local food to avoid feeling hungry and we were evading capture. The boat made slow progress. Occasionally an enemy plane came over, circled to look at us but left us alone.’

‘You must have been petrified,’ Millie said.

‘We were both pretty much on edge,’ Jeff agreed, ‘suffering from prickly heat, indigestion and more than a touch of gastro-enteritis. When we reached Jakarta we felt the same oppressive dread that the Japanese were approaching and would soon engulf the city. Shops and homes were already being abandoned. We took a room in a shabby hotel on the waterfront while we tried to find some way out of the place. We were aiming for Australia by then.

‘We knew the Japanese were moving quickly but we no longer had access to a wireless and met nobody who could speak English, so we had no idea how near the enemy was. It took us a week or so to get on a junk heading for Bali. We intended to wait there until we could pick up a vessel to take us to Australia, but the Japanese were in control of the sea lanes so there was less shipping of any sort.

‘It seemed safer to hire a canoe to take us to Lombok, a nearby island that was much less developed, because the Japanese tended to occupy the towns and didn’t always penetrate the jungle areas beyond. Once there, we walked several miles out of the little town to live on the beach. The local fishermen fed us and showed us how to build a shelter and we spent our days helping them push their canoes into the waves and haul in their catch.’

Andrew met Millie’s gaze. ‘When I’ve told people that, they often say, “You must have enjoyed it. It would be like a long holiday, wouldn’t it?” But as the months passed and we grew bored, it felt as though we’d be there for ever.’

‘We spent hours telling each other about our homes and our families,’ Jeff said.

Andrew felt, as things turned out, that he’d said far too much.

‘We were both larger than the local men,’ Jeff swept on, ‘and stuck out like sore thumbs so we were scared of being picked up by the enemy. But we had no idea where they were, or whether that was likely or not until we met up with Hans, a Dutchman who came to the beach to barter his farm produce for fish. He spoke good English and as he also had a wireless he was able to tell us that the Dutch had surrendered and the Japanese now controlled Java and were advancing on through the islands of the Flores Sea towards New Guinea. We knew that by May, half of New Guinea had fallen to them. Hans was getting anxious about the safety of his wife and two small children.’

‘How old were they?’ Millie asked.

‘Two and four. Then at last we had a stroke of luck. Hans heard that an Australian fishing boat had to put in to Lombok for repairs and would be heading back to Darwin. He arranged with the captain to take us there, together with his wife and children.’

‘We were destitute,’ Andrew said, ‘but the Australian Army took care of us.’ He remembered the enormous wave of relief he’d felt then. He’d lost a lot of weight and felt his physical endurance had been tested to the limit.

Jeff was very jovial. ‘The first thing I did was to write to my wife to let her know I was safe. We were flown home on an Australian Air Force cargo flight.’

Jeff liked to talk about getting out of Asia; he saw it as a wartime adventure in his military career and he could give the tale a touch of drama. But then he’d returned home to a welcoming wife and family.

Andrew couldn’t bear to think of it. He’d written to Annabel too but for him the tale didn’t have a happy ending.

Just then he saw Marcus come into the pub with a sprinkling of snow on the shoulders of his overcoat. He took it off and sat down, and moments later the barman came with his drink. He hadn’t noticed them yet but he was looking round and suddenly he leapt to his feet, snatched up the coat he’d taken off and rushed away, leaving his glass of whisky virtually untouched on the table before him.

Andrew wondered why, he’d seemed to be looking in their direction but surely catching sight of him and Millie here would not make him hare off and leave his drink? He guessed then that it was seeing Jeff that had made Marcus scarper. His uniform and booming voice made him stand out. Had Marcus not recognised Jeff Willis as his cousin, or had he not wanted to?

Later, before they left, Millie went to the ladies’ cloakroom and Jeff said, ‘I meant to ask you about Marcus Maynard. He belongs to the other side of the clan. How does he get on with Millie? Are they friendly? Do they pull together at work?’

‘No, quite the opposite, he doesn’t like her, doesn’t think she’s good enough to be a Maynard.’

Jeff laughed. ‘We Willises aren’t good enough for him either. He doesn’t want to know us, but I gathered from Pete that even the true-blood Maynards have an occasional dust-up.’

‘Funny you should mention Marcus. He came in here a short time ago and then went off in a hurry.’

‘Well, it’s near the business, isn’t it?’ They could see Millie coming back to join them and Jeff said, ‘She’s all right. You must bring her round to have a drink with us some time.’

It had stopped snowing, but four or five inches had settled on the road and was showing tyre ruts and footprints now. Andrew took Millie’s arm to walk her back to the car park. ‘We’ve got two cars,’ she said. They had a covering of snow and were the only vehicles left.

‘Safer to leave yours here tonight,’ he said, trying the door handle to make sure it was locked. ‘I’ll run you home. Will you be able to get into work tomorrow? If the buses aren’t running, ring me and I’ll fetch you.’

He drove Millie slowly and carefully into town and they had dinner at the Stork Hotel in an almost empty dining room. Without Jeff’s ready flow of boisterous conversation, Andrew was trying hard to find something to say. He should have paid more attention to her and not let Jeff take over the first part of the evening.

But sitting opposite Millie’s smiling face cheered him up. This was what he’d wanted to do for a long time. She talked about her family and asked about his, but he couldn’t bring himself to mention his personal difficulties. He felt on safer ground talking about the business.

She asked, ‘What are you hearing about Nigel on the grapevine? Is it thought he’s settling in and taking some responsibility for running the business?’

That made him smile. ‘What they’re saying is that you are doing that. It’s you they go to when they’ve got a problem, not Nigel.’

‘But does he do any useful work?’

‘I don’t know what he does. Better if you ask Tom or Arthur. I know they think Marcus is a complete waste of space. Mostly, when they have anything to say, it’s to complain about him.’

‘Yes, I’d like to sack Marcus but that would bring his father’s wrath down on my head. I don’t know what to do about him. What can you suggest?’

‘I’ve absolutely no ideas to offer on that.’ He laughed.

On the drive home she said, ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t bother you with these business problems. But I have nobody else who would understand and be able to help me.’

‘Millie, it doesn’t bother me in the least. In fact, I rather like it.’

At her garden gate she thanked him for what she called a very pleasant evening. He said, ‘I’m afraid Jeff rather took over the early part.’

‘That opened my eyes to how you spent the war. I don’t suppose you would have told me half as much.’

She was right about that, he wouldn’t have. He ached to take her in his arms, hug her and say, ‘We’ve both had our losses and disappointments but let’s put all that behind us. Together we could start afresh.’

But Millie gave no sign that she was interested in him, other than as a helpmate. She asked, ‘Would you like to come in for a drink, a cup of tea? Or I do have cocoa.’

He wanted to say yes, he wanted to prolong this evening. But already she was looking away, her mind on other things. ‘It doesn’t look as though Sylvie is home yet.’

‘Thank you but no,’ he said. ‘It’s time I went home.’

He waited until her front door closed behind her and then drove off feeling he never would find anybody willing to share his life.

Denis’s mother, Geraldine, welcomed Sylvie into the warmth of her home with a cup of tea and said, ‘Denis’s grandfather really took to your mother when she was a young apprentice like Denis is now. He said she was really interested in perfumes and seemed to retain everything he told her about them. Now she’s done the same for Denis.’

Geraldine was a jolly person and had plenty to say; Sylvie liked her. What she said about times past in the lab reminded Sylvie that she had been born on her mother’s eighteenth birthday. She decided she must be a slow starter because here she was at eighteen years of age having taken no interest in boys until now. Denis was her first boyfriend.

Savoury scents were coming from the kitchen making Sylvie’s mouth water and later on she sat down to a meal of steak and kidney pie with roast potatoes and cabbage. At home, Sylvie refused to eat offal of any sort but felt she couldn’t leave the kidney on her plate here, as Denis’s mother might take it as an insult, especially in these times of shortage. She ate it and found it delicious. Perhaps she’d been wrong about that too.

At eight o’clock Denis opened the curtains to see what the weather was doing. ‘It’s stopped snowing,’ he said, ‘it’s a lovely clear night now, but the snow’s sticking.’

‘Ring the bus depot,’ his mother said, ‘and find out if the buses are still running.’

The answer to that was no. ‘I’ll walk you home,’ he said.

‘Then you’d better start soon,’ his mother said. ‘It’s some distance and you’ll have to walk both ways. Why don’t you phone your mother, Sylvie, and tell her you’re setting out now? She could be worrying about you.’

Sylvie tried but her mother didn’t pick up the phone. It rang and rang until she had to assume that she wasn’t there. ‘I wonder where she’s gone on a night like this,’ she said. ‘She was worried about the snow.’

‘Do you have a key?’ Denis asked.

‘Yes.’

‘Then we’ll make a start. She’ll probably be there before we are.’

Geraldine insisted that Sylvie borrow her wellingtons and gave her a carrier bag to put her high-heeled court shoes in. She also provided extra socks and a warm scarf to wrap round her head. ‘It’ll be freezing hard by now.’

It was a lovely moonlit night and every roof and tree had its thick covering of crisp snow. There was almost no traffic and nobody about. Their footprints were the first on the pavements. It was a delight, the snow had transformed the mundane streets into a fairyland, but the wind was icy against Sylvie’s cheeks and it was slippery underfoot.