Shattered Dreams (5 page)

“Go and pack your suitcase then, Son, because you’re
not
having the bungalow, do you hear?”

“Johnny!” cried Gladys as she ran into the garden where her husband and son were having their row. “Eddie is not leaving this house! It’s his home and you must settle your differences man to man, both of you. Now come into the kitchen and I’ll make you both a nice cup of tea.”

“No, Mum, I’m going. I’ll not spend one more night under the roof of a man who could swindle his own flesh and blood. I’ll find somewhere to stay and I’ll find it easy enough to find a job in the building industry. Seeing as Dad has given me such a good apprenticeship.”

Eddie ran swiftly up to his bedroom and packed a few things into the suitcase that was on top of his wardrobe. He had no idea where he was going, but it would be many miles from there.

CHAPTER THREE

“Good afternoon, I hope you don’t mind me calling, but this is where Irene Wilson lives, isn’t it?”

Eddie stood on the doorstep of Irene’s aunt’s bungalow feeling very dejected after the row with his father earlier.

“Why yes, though Irene isn’t here because she’s working today. Can I help you?”

“I’m Eddie Dockerty, her intended. Would you allow me to come in and wait for her if it’s not too much trouble, as it looks as if it’s going to rain?”

“Oh, Mr Dockerty, Irene has told me such a lot about you, I was hoping that we would meet one day. Do come in and I’ll put the kettle on. Go through into the parlour, I’ve got a fire in there.”

Aunt Miriam led the way down the tiny hallway and showed Eddie into a neat and tidy room, though it was cluttered with furniture and nick-nacks. She pointed to an overstuffed horsehair sofa, where he sat waiting for his hostess, still with his suitcase in his hand.

“Chilly day seeing it’s almost June, isn’t it?”Aunt Miriam said chattily, bustling back into the room a few minutes later.“I’ve put the kettle on, but the gas seems to be very low at the moment, so it could be a while before I make the tea. Are you going somewhere, Mr Dockerty? I see you have a suitcase with you, would you like me to place it in the hall?”

“That would be very kind,” Eddie replied, though he went ahead of her, carrying the suitcase himself as the lady looked quite frail. She was a tiny person with her white hair pulled back under a Chinese-looking hat, wearing a black ankle-length dress with a long floral pinny and black pointed slippers with pompoms on the toes.

“That’s why I’ve come to see Irene,” he said, after settling himself back onto the sofa, while Aunt Miriam fluttered in the doorway.

“I’m going away and we usually see each other at the dance on Saturday nights, so I wanted to let her know.”

“Are you going on a holiday, Mr Dockerty? It’s a very nice time of the year for a holiday usually, but perhaps the weather will perk up once you go.”

“No, I’m not going on a holiday, I’m going to Liverpool to look for work. My father and I have had a falling out and I’ve decided to seek my fortune elsewhere. It means I’ll only be able to see Irene now and again, so I’ve come to tell her that.”

“Tell me to mind my own business if you want to, Mr Dockerty, but would this have anything to do with the fact that you and Irene are different religions?”

“Partly that, but no it’s a bit more complicated and perhaps it’s time I flew the nest. Stood on my own two feet as it were.”

“Ah, I hear the kettle singing. I’ll go and make us a nice cup of tea and perhaps you’ll relax a little, my dear.”

J.C. sat in his chair amongst the opulent furnishings of his sitting room. His leg was hurting and his breathing was laboured. He took a small sip of the whisky that he had poured himself a few minutes before. What an insolent young pup that son of his was, he thought wryly, though really Eddie was a chip off the old block. J.C. had been the same with his father all those years ago. Wouldn’t listen to anything that his parents had said. He’d gone against their wishes and married his childhood sweetheart, the lovely Rosalind, who was the illegitimate daughter of his Aunt Maggie and her lover Johnny. His action had caused a family rift that hadn’t been repaired until years later.

J.C. had been brought up with Rosalind. At one time he had thought that she was his sister, as he had lots of sisters younger than him. The pair of them had rough and tumbled together in the open fields that surrounded Redstone House at the bottom of Mill Hill Road, but curiously she always disappeared from their home for a few of the summer months. A lady would come and collect her, then bring her back at the start of the next school term. When he’d grown older, Rosalind told him that her mother owned a big business in Neston and she came twice a year from Ireland to put her finances in order. In the intervening time, Rosalind lived in a place called Killala, where she was allowed to run wild on the headland there.

At the age of sixteen, Rosalind was an attractive young woman with shoulder-length, curly auburn hair, a curvy body and hazel eyes that always seemed to be twinkling with mischief. J.C. was smitten with her and at the age of nineteen years, he had all the stirrings in his body of a young man wanting to fall in love. That year she had told the family that she wouldn’t be coming back to England again that summer, as her father had died and her mother was now on her own.

J.C. had missed her presence so much that he had asked his father if he could follow Rosalind to Ireland and that was when the truth came out. A closely guarded skeleton in the Dockerty family cupboard.

His Aunt Maggie had given birth to Rosalind while she was still married to her husband, then had run away to be with Johnny, her sea-going lover, leaving the business in the hands of Michael, her son. Eddie and Hannah, J.C.’s parents, had been forced to leave their home at Selwyn Lodge and start a business of their own. Rosalind had stayed as part of the family to get an education in England, as Ireland was still in turmoil after the famine had caused havoc in that cruelly mistreated land. J.C. had been told not to embroil himself with the Irish branch of the family. Yes, they’d treated Rosalind as one of their own, but they wanted a better marriage for their son.

“But I love Rosalind,” J.C. had cried with certainty. “She’s the only girl I will ever love and I want to go over to Ireland to marry her. It’s not her fault that her parents lived in sin and it’s not as if I’m related to her.”

His father had said be it on his own head, so J.C. had travelled to Killala. He married his sweetheart in the local Catholic church and stayed on to work as a stonemason.

But no children came from their union. Though Rosalind conceived many times, the babies were still born or an early miscarriage and it was a great source of sadness and pain to them.

When J.C. was twenty-nine, Maggie, his mother-in-law, passed away and a great deal of problems were caused by her death. Though her Will was straight forward, her son Michael meanly contested it in regards to the residence called Selwyn Lodge. Maggie had left it to Eddie and Hannah, but Michael went to court and unfortunately won. Hannah was given an annual bequest and Rosalind was left possession of the little house in Killala. Johnny, her father, having been drowned at sea.

Then one fateful night, a year after Maggie had passed away, Rosalind had a fatal haemorrhage and lost her life. J.C. was heartbroken and went back to make things up with his family and with the proceeds of Rosalind’s cottage he bought himself a terrace house. He went back to work for his father, but Eddie was getting old and the business was being run successfully by his other three sons. J.C. was resented, the prodigal son had been given the fattened calf, but he managed to get along with them before marrying again and settling down.

His new wife’s name was Gladys; a girl of tender years who had trained to be a nurse in her native Wales and had been visiting an aunt, who lived in the village up Mill Hill Road. J.C. was a friend of her aunt’s son and love blossomed between them from the start. Well it did on Gladys’ part anyway. J.C. was only looking for a wife to replace Rosalind, but he was an attractive man with property, which made him suitable marriage material in Gladys’ eyes.

J.C. came back from his memories and lit a cigarette, though he knew he would be in trouble with Gladys. She hated the smell of smoke in her house and said that it lingered on her furnishings. It couldn’t be good for her husband’s lungs, if the ash was anything to go by in the saucer he used. He wanted to be careful, he wasn’t getting any younger and if he wasn’t careful they’d be burying him in a couple of years.

Nag, nag, nag.
He didn’t have that problem when he went to visit Alice in the little house in Queensferry. She had bought some pretty ashtrays made out of bone china painted in pink and white and had them dotted around her living room so that he would always have one to hand. And he never had any problems with back chat from his son who lived in the house with her. Stanley was only twelve, but he had the most impeccable manners. He didn’t know that J.C. was his father, of course. The lad thought he was an uncle and that his father had died just after the War. That was the story that Alice had invented. She was a widow of a soldier who had been gassed while serving in the Great War and J.C. was kindly Uncle John, who had helped them in their hour of need.

Irene’s eyes widened with horror when she heard Eddie’s story later that day. She had been surprised to see him when she walked through the hallway of her aunty’s bungalow and saw him chewing on one of her aunty’s homemade scones.

“So has your father thrown you out then? Is there no possibility of you making friends with him again?”

“No, Irene, he’s got to learn that he can’t treat me in the way he has. That bungalow was for me and you. I hadn’t told you as I wanted it to be a surprise, but now it looks as if we’ll be living in a couple of rented rooms.”

“Oh we’ve plenty of time to save up for something better than a couple of rented rooms, Eddie. You probably wouldn’t get permission to marry anyway now, so we’ve still got a couple of years.”

“That isn’t the point, Irene. It’s going to be hard to find a job when I say that I’m the son of J.C. Dockerty. Everyone knows him on the Wirral and they won’t give a job to someone who’s had a falling out with him. I’ll have to find something different I suppose, unless I move to Liverpool, but I’d be paying most of my wages out on somewhere decent to rent.”

“I’d say you could stay here with us,”Aunty Miriam piped up, who was listening from the doorway whilst she waited for the kettle to boil to make Irene a cup of tea. “But it isn’t done to have two young people living under the same roof and really we wouldn’t have the room once Jenny moves in.”

“You’re okay. I’ve got a mate who lives in Chester who can put me up until I find a job, but I’ll need to get off now to see him soon. Irene, we won’t be able to go dancing tonight.”

“I’ve just had a thought, Eddie. Listen to this, Aunty. What if we ask my parents if he can go and live with them? He could have my old room for the time being. I know they need a bit of income with Dad only getting a bit from the N.A.B. and you’d be a Godsend for my mother, Eddie, because she needs some help with the garden now that Dad’s losing his sight.”

“But I thought Isabel and her husband were living there,” said Aunty, looking puzzled at her niece’s suggestion.“There won’t be any room for your fiancé with the little ones as well.”

“Ah, but they won’t be there much longer. Mother came into the shop and told me that they’d found a place to rent in Southport, that’s where Isabel’s new husband comes from and they want to make a fresh start there.”

“I couldn’t possibly, Irene. I haven’t even met your parents, what will they think when I turn up on the doorstep?”

“You didn’t know Aunty Miriam either until you turned up here today. I’m sure Aunty will let you stay one night on the sofa and then we can go tomorrow and I’ll introduce you.”

Irene and Eddie caught the bus from Woodside terminus to Wallasey. They got off on the corner of the dock road and walked up Poulton Bridge Road to Peartree Cottage. It was a four square building made of sandstone and in the small front garden stood the tree that gave the house its name.

Irene’s sister answered the door. She looked as if the baby she was expecting was due for arrival at any moment, with her bump in front looking incongruous on her tiny frame. She’d had to wear a big coat for her recent registry office wedding.

“Irene,” she said smiling, as she looked beyond her sister and saw she had a young man with her.

“Is this Eddie you’ve got with you? I wondered when we were going to meet your fiancé, you naughty girl.”

“Yes, this is Eddie. Eddie, this is Isabel, my sister. I only told Mother yesterday that I was engaged to be married and she said I was to bring you over straight away. I bet they didn’t think I’d be bringing you over so soon, though.”

“Who is it, Isabel?” asked a feeble voice from within.

“It’s Irene, Dad. She’s brought her fiance over to meet us. I’ll just go and put the kettle on the hob and I’ll make us a cup of tea.”

“Hello Papa,” said Irene, walking into the rather sparsely furnished room, where her father lay on a sagging blue moquette-covered sofa.

“I’ve brought Eddie, my intended, to meet you. This is Eddie. Meet my father, Charlie Wilson.”

Eddie nodded politely, putting out his hand to grasp the man’s in his, whilst feeling sorry for the poor old bugger.

“Is Mother about? I suppose she’ll be in the garden, that’s where I’d expect her anyway.”

“She’s out there with Isabel’s husband bringing in the new potatoes. This is the first time they’ve had the opportunity, I could hear the rain lashing on the windows yesterday.”

“Poor Papa, is your eyesight no better? Is there nothing more they can do for you? What did the hospital say?”

“Stop worrying over it Irene, what will be will be. Eddie, come over and sit by me. I’ve still a little sight left enough to take a good look at my future son-to-be.”

“Pleased to meet you, Sir,” said Eddie, sitting down beside the man and staring into the pale, lined face.“I believe you used to be a sparky, working on those underwater machines.”