Laceys of Liverpool (11 page)

‘I can manage on me own, thanks,’ Mrs Evans snapped.

It was Alice’s turn to wink at Patsy. Fionnuala persisted in treating anyone over forty as if they had one foot in the grave. She would help women down to the lavatory in the yard, wait for them outside and help them back again. Even when asked by one woman, admittedly elderly, but resentful at being fussed over, if she was waiting to wipe her arse, it hadn’t prevented Fionnuala from assuming that most of her mother’s customers were helpless invalids. Still, Alice thought, her heart was in the right place.

Alice went over to a chair facing the mirror and laid
her hands on Mrs Evans’s shoulders. ‘What is it you want, luv? Explain to me again.’

‘Frosting. Just the tips of me hair bleached. I would have thought you’d have heard of frosting, Mrs Lacey,’ the woman said sniffily, ‘you being a hairdresser, like.’

‘Of course I’ve heard of frosting. I get
Vogue
every month to keep up with the latest styles and products, don’t I? I just wasn’t sure if you knew what it was.’ Bleached ends wouldn’t suit someone as dark as Edna Evans. But then, the customer was always right and if she wanted to end up looking dead stupid it was up to her.

‘I wouldn’t have asked for it if I didn’t know what it was.’

‘Just making sure, luv,’ Alice said serenely. Some customers could be really difficult.

‘You’re obviously very busy,’ Edna Evans said grudgingly.

‘I’ve had to turn customers away. We’ve been booked solid for weeks, but then Christmas Eve is always busy. Patsy’s only helping today as a special favour.’

The door opened, the bell chimed sweetly and Bernadette Moynihan came in. ‘Oh, it’s like a little oasis in here,’ she sang. ‘It’s dead gloomy outside. The lights in the window look the gear, Al. Lovely and bright.’

‘They actually spell “Lacey’s”. It took me ages to do. Patsy,’ she called, ‘would you comb out Mrs Curran, then put a gown on Bernie and wet her hair.’

‘I’m here for a Peter Pan cut, Al. It doesn’t need wetting.’

‘I read the other day that hair cuts better if it’s wet. I thought I’d experiment on you.’

‘Oh, ta! Friendship can have its limits, Alice Lacey. If you spoil me hair, I’ll never speak to you again.’

The dryers gradually emptied. Edna Evans went away looking as if she’d been sprinkled with icing sugar,
tipping Alice sixpence, so
she
must be pleased. Mrs Glaister seemed reluctant to leave the warm, brightly lit salon with its silver decorations and coloured lights. Feeling sorry for the old woman, knowing that after five years she still missed Myrtle, Alice suggested she stay and have another glass of sherry. The salon would be closing in half an hour.

‘And there’s still a few mince pies left, luv. Help yourself. Fion, start cleaning the sinks, there’s a good girl. Patsy, you can go if you want. Thanks for coming.’

Patsy O’Leary wished everyone Merry Christmas and went home. Mrs Glaister realised her time was up when Alice turned the ‘Open’ sign to ‘Closed’. Fionnuala went to tidy the kitchen and Bernadette examined the Peter Pan cut in the mirror. It was a big step, going from very long to very short in the space of a few minutes. Her neck felt cold, she complained. Alice gave her a towel to keep it warm.

There were footsteps on the stairs and a stocky young woman with a vivid, smiling face entered the salon. She wore a warm tweed coat and a knitted mohair tam-o’-shanter. ‘I’m off now, Mrs Lacey.’

‘Miss Caddick!’ Alice kissed the woman on the cheek. ‘Have a lovely Christmas and I hope the wedding goes really well. Good luck for the future.’

‘Same to you, Mrs Lacey. I couldn’t have wished for a nicer landlady. I’ve just given upstairs a good clean, ready for the new tenant.’

‘Ta, luv. I wish you were getting married in Bootle. I’d have come to the church for a look.’

‘If I was getting married in Bootle, you’d have been invited, Mrs Lacey, but Durham’s a long way to ask someone to come.’ She shouted, ‘’Bye, Fionnuala,’ bestowed a glittering smile on Bernadette and left.

‘So, you’ve got to find a new tenant for upstairs,’ Bernie said.

‘I’ve already got one. The teacher taking over Miss Caddick’s class at St James’s is taking over the flat as well. Nell Greene, her name is, with an “e” on the end. I take it she’s a “miss”. She comes from London.’

‘What’s she like?’

‘Dunno, I haven’t seen her. It was all arranged by letter.’

Bernadette worriedly regarded her hair. ‘Does this look too boyish? And I don’t like the look of me ears.’

‘Peter Pan was a boy, so it’s bound to. As for your ears, I’ll give them a trim if you like.’

‘You say the nicest things. Albert’ll have a fit tonight when he sees it. We’re going to Reece’s to a dance.’

‘Albert Eley hasn’t got the strength to have a fit. And I’m surprised he can dance, if you must know.’

Bernadette pretended to look angry, then her face collapsed in a loud sigh. ‘He’ll probably not even notice me hair or me new dress. He’s a good dancer, though. He had lessons in some place in Spellow Lane.’

‘Tap-dancing? Like Daisy O’Leary?’

‘’Course not, idiot.’ She giggled. ‘Ballroom dancing. He went with his mam.’

‘I don’t know what you see in him,’ Alice said bluntly. Albert Eley was a bachelor of forty who lived in Byron Street with his mother. He was the most uninteresting man she had ever known.

Bernie shrugged. ‘He’s company. At least he’s never tried anything on.’

‘Only because he wouldn’t know how. Seriously, Bernie. You’re only thirty-seven, you’re still dead pretty. There must be loads of men out there who’d be an improvement on Albert Eley.’

‘Until I met Albert, I never came across a single one
who didn’t want to jump into bed with me within the first five minutes. He’s easy to be with, very polite, free with his money. The only thing that gets me down is him going on and on about his bloody mother. It’s mam this and mam that until I could scream.’ Bernie giggled. ‘Anyroad,
you’re
only thirty-seven and still dead pretty. There’s a few men around who’d be an improvement on John Lacey.’

‘Shush!’ Alice put her finger to her lips and nodded towards the kitchen where her daughter could be heard washing dishes. ‘Me and John get on fine nowadays.’

‘Not all that fine,’ Bernie said in a hoarse whisper. ‘He still sleeps in the parlour. The kids must have guessed there’s something up by now.’

‘They think it’s his back, he ricked it and he has to sleep on his own.’

‘A likely story!’

‘It
is
a story, Bernie, and as long as the kids believe it, that’s all that matters. Anyroad, it doesn’t bother me, not much. I’ve got used to it by now.’ She gave her friend a little shove. ‘Stop trying to make me miserable. I love having me own salon. I’m dead happy, even if things aren’t exactly perfect at home. Now shove off and make yourself beautiful for Albert. Oh, and by the way, when you come to Christmas dinner tomorrer, try not to rile me dad. All you two ever do is argue.’

Bernadette opened the door. ‘Tell him not to rile me,’ she said pertly before closing it.

‘Phew!’ Alice locked the door and collapsed in a chair. ‘It’s been a day and a half, today has. Have you nearly finished, Fion?’ she called. ‘It’s time us two went home.’

‘I’ve only got to dry the dishes, Mam.’

‘Just leave them on the draining board to dry themselves.’

Someone tried the door. ‘We’re closed,’ Alice
shouted, but the person banged on the glass. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she groaned. ‘It’s only your Auntie Cora.’

‘Tell her to sod off, Mam.’

‘Don’t be silly, luv.’

‘I’ve just come to wish you Merry Christmas and discuss the lease,’ Cora said when Alice reluctantly let her in. Her light skin was becoming sallow and her colourless hair was scraped back in its usual sparse bun. She wore an unflattering camel coat.

‘Merry Christmas, Cora,’ Alice said coldly. ‘What about the lease?’ The seven-year lease expired at the end of the month and was due to be renewed. No doubt Cora had come on Horace Flynn’s behalf to announce the cost of a new one.

‘It’s going up,’ Cora said.

‘I expected it would.’ It seemed only fair.

‘A new seven-year lease will be fourteen hundred pounds.’ The small eyes gleamed with pleasure. She clearly enjoyed being the purveyor of such grim news.

‘Fourteen hundred!’ Alice gasped. ‘I can’t afford that much, Cora! The rates went up earlier this year and the last electricity bill made me eyes pop.’

‘You’ll just have to cut down on expenses,’ Cora said. ‘Get rid of that assistant, for one.’

‘Not our Fion!’

‘No, the other one. That Patsy woman. You haven’t needed her since Fionnuala’s been full-time.’

‘I couldn’t possibly. She needs the money. Her husband’s dead mean and she’s desperate for their Daisy to go on the stage.’

‘There’s no room for sentiment in business, Alice.’

‘There is in mine,’ Alice cried. ‘There’s no way I’d get rid of Patsy. Anyroad, we’re often in need of three pairs of hands.’

Cora shrugged her narrow shoulders. ‘Take it or leave it – the lease, that is.’

‘We’ll leave it, thanks all the same,’ said a voice. Fionnuala came in from the kitchen. Cora shrank back. She wouldn’t have come if she’d known the girl was there. While she could wrap her gutless wonder of a mother around her little finger, she was nervous of Fionnuala who somehow always seemed to get the better of her. It was Fionnuala who, years ago, had demanded a copy of the agreement that her stupid mam had signed and pointed out Cora was only entitled to a third share of ‘the business presently known as Myrtle’s Hairdressing Salon’, so wasn’t due a penny from the upstairs flat: it was Fionnuala who made sure Cora bore her share of every single expense incurred by Lacey’s, down to things like lavatory paper and hairpins and even the tea the customers drank. Fionnuala had laughed like a drain when Cora tried to suggest that tips were part of the takings.

However, even Fionnuala couldn’t claim that ‘in perpetuity’ didn’t mean just that. In perpetuity. For all time. For ever.

‘But I asked you at the time, and you said “till the money’s paid back”,’ a shocked Alice had said, years ago, when she thought she had repaid the twenty-five pounds with interest.

‘I did no such thing.’ Cora had contrived to look indignant. ‘I assumed anyone in their right mind would know what “in perpetuity” meant. I didn’t just give you a loan. I invested in the business. A third of it’s mine. It ses so on the agreement.’

‘You’re not half an idiot, Mam,’ Fionnuala had groaned and Cora couldn’t help but silently agree.

Now, Fionnuala looked contemptuously away from her aunt towards her mother. ‘Mam, someone said the
other day that Gloria’s in Marsh Lane is closing down. That agreement you signed was for Myrtle’s. If we moved somewhere else it would be null and void.’

Null and void! Alice wondered where her daughter had got such a grand phrase from. ‘That’s right,’ she said to Cora.

Cora’s lip curled. Fionnuala wasn’t quite as clever as she thought. ‘That’s funny,’ she said. ‘Mr Flynn holds the freehold of Gloria’s and he’s never mentioned anything about it closing down.’

Fionnuala was only momentarily taken aback. Her eyes flickered slightly. ‘Then maybe I heard wrong, but we could still move somewhere else.’

‘What, and lose all your custom?’ Cora sneered. ‘Don’t forget, if you upped and left, this place could still be let to another hairdresser. It doesn’t have to close down.’

‘Oh, no!’ Alice flung her arms around a dryer. ‘I wouldn’t want anyone else to have Lacey’s.’

‘Well, there you are, then.’ Cora smacked her lips. ‘As I said, you’ll just have to cut down on expenses. It’s much too warm in here, fr’instance, and you don’t need so many lights on, not now you’re closed. Get rid of that Patsy woman and stop being so free with the cups of tea.’ She eyed the single mince pie left on a plate and the remains of the sherry. ‘I bet women don’t get given stuff like that when they get their hair done in Mayfair.’

Fionnuala almost exploded with rage. ‘How dare you tell us how to run our business?’

‘Shush, luv. Goodnight, Cora,’ Alice said with false brightness. ‘I’ll tell you after Christmas whether I’ll take up the new lease or not. It needs some deciding, like.’

‘Honestly, Mam,’ Fion groaned after her aunt had gone. ‘You were dead stupid signing that bloody agreement.’

‘Horace Flynn could still put up the lease whether I’d signed the agreement or not.’

‘Yes, but we could
afford
it if we didn’t have to give Cora such a big chunk of what we earn.’

‘Hmm,’ Alice said thoughtfully. Her dad still maintained Cora did more for the landlord than keep his books. Alice wouldn’t have touched him with a bargepole, but there were more ways than one to get round a man like Horace Flynn.

Next day all the Laceys, along with Bernadette Moynihan and Danny Mitchell, sat down to Christmas dinner in the parlour of the house in Amber Street. It was a happy, festive occasion, occasionally hilarious. Bernadette and Danny pretended to be nice to each other – they’d even bought each other presents – a loud check scarf and a frilly pinafore.

From the head of the table, John Lacey beamed proudly at his family. The girls, once so similar, had acquired their own, singular features as they approached adulthood. Orla was dead pretty, the spitting image of her mother. A real heartbreaker, she already had a steady boyfriend of whom John disapproved. She’d got herself a job with the
Crosby Star
. At first, all she’d done was run messages and the like while she learnt shorthand and typing at night school. Now she was taking letters and had her own desk and typewriter. She was going to be a reporter one day, she said boastfully. ‘With a big London paper.’

Maeve seemed to have stopped growing at the age of twelve. Small, dainty, quietly self-assured, she worked at Bootle General Hospital in Derby Road, just skivvying to be blunt, but with the intention of training to be a proper nurse when she was old enough.

He sometimes worried about his eldest daughter,
Fionnuala, who, at only eighteen, had become matronly stout and didn’t appear to have a friend in the world. She was an awkward, graceless girl, tactless – always saying the wrong thing – and over-effusive when there was no need. Perhaps it wasn’t good for her to work with her mother, mixing with women two, three, four times her age and not a lad in sight.