The Price of Love (12 page)

Their minds were finally made up for them when the rent man threatened that unless they paid their back rent in full before the end of the week he would be sending the bailiffs in and Lucy was left in no doubt what action to take; finding somewhere cheaper to live was the obvious answer.

They both agreed that it would have to be somewhere in the Scotland Road area and Lucy spent a couple of days trailing around looking for somewhere suitable. It had to be rooms that were already furnished because if they were seen moving furniture out of Priory Terrace, that would alert the neighbours and the debt collector would be on their heels right away.

Finally, in desperation, Lucy decided to rent two furnished rooms in a three-storey house in Hans Court, even though it was not what she was looking for and she wasn’t at all sure that Sam would settle there.

The area was overrun with children, dogs and vermin of every description, but as Mrs Sparks – the officious-looking grey-haired landlady – was quick to point out, she was lucky to find rooms where the rent was only four shillings a week.

‘I’ve got someone else coming this evening to have a look,’ she stated as she stood in the doorway, arms akimbo, while Lucy took another look at the two rooms. ‘If you want me to let you have them then I need two weeks’ rent in advance.’

‘I’ll take them,’ Lucy told her as she counted out the money and put it into the woman’s grimy hand. ‘There you are, so can you give me the key, and I’ll be back soon with some of our things.’

When she went home and told Sam what she’d done and warned him that it was a pretty slummy area, his face dropped.

‘We’ve got to get away from here before the bailiffs arrive so I’m going to start sorting out the stuff we’ll be taking with us and begin carrying it there. If we’re careful and take it bit by bit, then none of the neighbours will notice. I can take a bagful on the way to work and you can do the same midmorning and again later in the day when you go for a walk.’

‘I think we’re mad to walk out and leave so much of our furniture behind,’ he grumbled.

‘It’s the only way we can go without anyone knowing where we’ve gone,’ Lucy reminded him.

‘They won’t be out of pocket if they sell off what we’re leaving behind,’ Sam said sourly.

‘Good! That eases my conscience quite a bit,’ Lucy affirmed. ‘From now on I am determined never to get into debt again.’

‘As soon as we’ve moved I’m going to try and get work of some sort, even if it is only selling newspapers on the street corner,’ Sam told her.

They waited until after dark that night to leave Priory Terrace for good. It was a bitterly cold January night and as she raked out the fire and cleaned out the grate so that the house was left neat and tidy, Lucy wondered how they were going to manage to keep warm in their new place because there was only a tiny black iron grate in the larger of the rooms and nothing at all in the smaller room.

Sam was waiting impatiently for them to get going so, taking a last look round at the only home they’d ever known, she brushed away the tears that were running down her cheeks with the back of her hand and squared her shoulders.

‘Time for off,’ she said, struggling to give him an encouraging smile which Sam ignored.

Both of them were carrying large bundles as they left Priory Terrace and caught a tram as far as Exchange Station.

‘I thought if we walked from here, if anyone happened to see us on the tram, they’d think we were going somewhere by train,’ Lucy told him as they made their way along Scotland Road, Sam walking rather slowly because he was finding it difficult to manage the bundle he was carrying as well as his stick.

‘This is a funny time of night to be arriving,’ Mrs Sparks greeted them when she opened the door. ‘I’d already locked up for the night. Not running away from the law, are you?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘No, of course not,’ Lucy said with a forced laugh. ‘We couldn’t make it any earlier because we wanted to come together and so we had to wait until I finished work.’

‘Oh yes? So one of you has a job, then?’ Mrs Sparks commented, looking questioningly at Sam’s stick.

‘This is my brother, he was involved in an accident but he is almost better now,’ Lucy explained.

‘Brother? You never mentioned a brother. When you gave me the names Sam and Lucy Collins, I thought you were married; a husband and wife. You never mentioned that it was your brother who would be sharing the rooms with you.’

Lucy looked at Sam worriedly. Surely this woman who had taken two weeks’ rent, eight shillings of their money, wasn’t going to turn them out into the street because they were brother and sister?

‘Does it make any difference?’ Sam asked. ‘As long as you’re getting the rent for the rooms regularly, surely that is all that matters,’ he added sharply.

‘Well,’ Mrs Sparks sniffed, ‘I’m not at all sure about that. I keep a respectable house.’

‘I’m sure you do, Mrs Sparks,’ Sam told her heartily.

‘So what sort of sleeping arrangements are you going to make then?’ Mrs Sparks asked, her sharp eyes fixed on Lucy.

‘If it makes you feel any happier, let me assure you that I will be sleeping in the living room and my sister will be using the bedroom,’ Sam told her.

‘Well, I suppose that makes it all right, then,’ Mrs Sparks admitted reluctantly.

‘Now if we can come inside out of the cold I’d be grateful. I find standing around out here on the doorstep is making my bad leg ache,’ he sighed, before giving her a broad smile.

Both Lucy and Sam found living in Hans Court very constraining. Within days of moving in, Lucy knew she had made a terrible mistake and wished she had given Sam’s idea about lodgers more thought.

She had always prided herself on being levelheaded and thinking things through before taking any action, but this time she had certainly not done so; she would have given a great deal to go back to their clean and comfortable three-bedroom house.

She knew that everybody would be talking about the way both she and Sam had been jilted as well as the disgrace of having the bailiffs in, and pride had made her act impetuously. There had been only one thought in her head and that was for her and Sam to get as far away from Priory Terrace as possible.

Well, she’d certainly done that, she thought morosely. The only thing to be said in favour of her action was that they should be able to manage to meet all their bills.

Their living conditions were abysmal. The two rooms were small; the main room had a low cupboard with a gas ring on it in one corner which was curtained off to serve as a kitchen. The furniture was old and decrepit and it made Lucy even more dismayed that she had left all their good furniture behind at Priory Terrace.

She knew she should have listened to Sam’s idea. At least they would have been able to go on living in relative comfort and both of them would have had their own bed to sleep in. That had been her pride again, she thought miserably. She couldn’t bear the thought of the neighbours feeling sympathetic because she had to take in lodgers.

That wasn’t the only reason, of course. There was the further shame, which she found difficult to face up to, namely Robert’s betrayal.

She had no idea how Sam felt about the neighbours finding out that Patsy was expecting Robert’s baby. If he felt anywhere near as hurt as she did, then it was breaking his heart so probably he was as glad as she was to get away before all the sniggers and whispers about what had happened started to circulate.

There were moments when she wondered if she was in some ways to blame for what had happened. She loved Robert and had thought that he felt the same way about her, and she had taken it for granted that he knew all this. Looking back, she wished she’d found more time to be with him and that she had told him how much she cared about him.

Most of all, though, she blamed Patsy. Patsy was a flirt and always had been, and Lucy even wondered if Patsy had become interested in Robert on the rebound when Percy was told to stop seeing her.

She probably thought that Robert was the next best thing, Lucy thought ruefully. Now that he’d finished his apprenticeship at Carter’s Cars and was earning a decent wage, he was quite a catch; she doubted, though, that Patsy would stay faithful to him.

She wondered where the two of them would set up home. She had a feeling that it might be with Patsy’s family or Robert’s. Most likely it would be at Patsy’s place, she mused, because Patsy would be relying on her mother to help her look after the baby.

The fact that Patsy was expecting Robert’s baby was the bitterest pill of all, but it was no good blaming him or Patsy for the mess she was in now, Lucy told herself. Abandoning their home and running away as if she was the guilty one was entirely her own fault and now she had to make the best of the situation.

The drawbacks to living in Hans Court were so numerous that every day seemed to be worse than the one before. It took up to half an hour to boil the heavy iron kettle on the pitifully small fire in the iron grate. Yet to boil up the tin kettle on the small gas ring cost so much that she dreaded having to do it.

Sam was quite resourceful; he suggested keeping the iron kettle full and over the fire all the time and then pouring enough from it into the tin kettle to make their tea.

‘It will only take a couple of minutes to boil whenever we need it. The hot water in the iron kettle will usually be hot enough for washing up or for when we want to have a wash.’

Getting washed was also something of a problem. When they had been at Priory Terrace they’d had a proper bathroom; here in Hans Court they had to wash in a bowl in the kitchen and then tip the dirty water into a bucket and carry it downstairs and empty it down the drain outside the back door. Sam couldn’t manage to do it very well because of his stick, so it was a chore that was usually left to Lucy.

The lavatory, which they had to share with the other families in the house, was out in the backyard and was a dank, evil-smelling place which Lucy hated having to visit, but there was no alternative.

The only salvation as far as she could see was that, if they were frugal, they could manage on the money she earned from charring and, as soon as they were settled in, she intended to look around and try and find some extra work or even a second job like she’d had before.

Sam was making considerable progress and he was also determined to find a job so that they could move to something better as soon as possible. There was so much unemployment in Liverpool, however, that even when Sam was lucky enough to get an interview, the moment a prospective employer noticed that he was using a walking stick, the interview was immediately over.

It seemed that no one wanted the liability of employing a man who was not one hundred per cent fit and this made Sam increasingly depressed and irritable.

‘You’ll have to start your own business, luv,’ Lucy joked in an attempt to cheer him up.

‘That’s not such a bad idea.’ Sam nodded. ‘What sort of things do men going to work need most but probably haven’t got the time to shop for?’ he mused as he helped her to get their evening meal ready.

‘Lots of things, I imagine; everything from ciggies and matches to sarnies for their lunch.’

‘Mm, but I would need quite a bit of money to buy stock to sell those sorts of things.’

‘We could try and save it,’ Lucy offered. ‘It might take a few months but it’s not impossible.’

‘We’re living on bread and scrape most of the time as it is,’ Sam told her bitterly as, one at a time, he put the bowls of soup she’d prepared on to the table. ‘No, I must think of something I can do right away and which doesn’t cost very much to set up.’

‘Well, I can’t think of anything except begging – that’s unless you fancy becoming a shoeshine boy?’ Lucy laughed as she sat down and started to eat.

‘That’s it!’ He waved his spoon in the air jubilantly. ‘That’s what I’ll do. I’ll stand down at the Pier Head each day and as all the toffs from Wallasey come off the boat I’ll offer to shine their shoes for tuppence a time.’

‘You can’t do that,’ Lucy exclaimed aghast. ‘Supposing someone we know from Priory Terrace saw you!’

‘No one from Priory Terrace is likely to be coming off a ferry boat from Wallasey, now are they, especially first thing in the morning?’ Sam argued.

‘No, you’re probably right,’ Lucy agreed reluctantly. Did it really matter all that much if they did? she thought cynically. It would probably have broken her parents’ hearts to know that Sam was thinking of becoming a shoeshine boy and that now she went out charring. Then, on the other hand, she thought philosophically, they would have been proud of the fact that instead of grumbling about losing their jobs they’d both found another way of earning a living.

‘You haven’t got the tools for the job, though, have you?’ she asked.

‘What sort of tools do I need? I said I’d polish their shoes, not repair them.’

‘You will need tins of black and brown shoe polishes, separate brushes for putting on the polish, a duster of some kind or a soft cloth to give the shoes a final polish, and something for the men to rest their foot on while you work on their shoes.’

Sam looked so crestfallen as she listed all the things that he was going to need that Lucy quickly tried to think of how they could obtain them.

‘A small wooden box or crate from the greengrocer’s, or a big biscuit tin from the grocer’s would be ideal,’ she said quickly. ‘What’s more you could carry all your brushes and polishes inside it.’

Sam’s face brightened. ‘That sounds a good idea. Is it going to cost very much for all the cleaning materials, do you think?’

‘Leave it with me for a couple of days and I’ll see what I can find,’ Lucy promised him.

Three days later and Sam was in business. Carrying the large tin was not too easy for him so Lucy found an old sack and attached a strong webbing strap to it which he could put on crosswise over his shoulder. It was still heavy and somewhat clumsy but Sam was so determined that he managed.

The first day was disappointing as he only had three customers. Lucy did her best to cheer him up, pointing out that no one had expected him to be there and that he was bound to do better the next day.