Laceys of Liverpool Read Online Free PDF Page B

notice to quit to half a dozen of me tenants since their hubbieswere called up. What is it you get; a shilling a day, and twenty-five bob a week allowance?’
    ‘I’m good at managing with money.’
    Mr Flynn glanced around the neat parlour of O’Connell Street. He was small and tubby, shaped like a ball, with exceptionally short arms and legs. A fringe of greying hair went from ear to ear at the back of his otherwise bald head, which was covered with brown blotches, like over-large freckles. From what she could gather, he wasn’t married.
    ‘I must say you keep the place nice.’ He shook his head. ‘But no, Mrs Lacey. I’m not prepared to move tenants up a notch until I feel assured they’re in a position to pay the increased rent.’ He smiled a touch sarcastically. ‘Perhaps one day, when the war’s over and your husband’s in a well-paid job.’
    If she had to wait for Billy to get a well-paid job, she’d be in O’Connell Street until the day she died. Cora gnawed her bottom lip. She was still shoplifting. It was easier with a baby in a pram, then a toddler in a pushchair. Like before, some things she kept, some she pawned. Once, when it was winter, she’d taken a fur coat from C & A Modes, not an expensive one, it being C & A, though she’d got five quid for it from the pawn shop. But she couldn’t very well tell Mr Flynn
that
.
    Maurice was two, and she’d already bought the cane, hung it on the wall and had used it a few times, when once again she had a go at Horace Flynn about a house. There was a lovely one going in Garibaldi Road and she knew it was one of his because she’d seen him collect the rent. The previous tenants were two old maids in their fifties who’d gone to live in America. She asked him into the parlour to remind him how nicely it was kept.
    ‘I’ve got a job,’ she lied, ‘serving in a shop.’
    ‘Which shop?’
    Cora thought quickly. ‘Mercer’s the newsagent’s in Marsh Lane.’
    ‘I’d like to see some proof; a wage slip, a letter from the manager, if you don’t mind, so I’ll know you can afford the rent.’
    ‘I’ll ask the manager for a letter. I don’t get wage slips.’ She didn’t want to admit she’d lied. Next week, she’d just pay the rent and keep her gob shut. If he mentioned Mercer’s she’d say she’d left.
    There was silence. Mr Flynn was staring fixedly at the wall at the cane. ‘What’s that for?’
    ‘Me little boy. I’m a firm believer in discipline.’
    He licked his lips. ‘So am I.’
    Cora saw a gleam of perspiration on the round bald head, a craving in the round wet eyes. She also saw something else: a way of getting the house in Garibaldi Road. It was the way she was to use to get the lovely furniture that went in it, the reason why it was many years before she shoplifted again.
    She smoothed back her hair, curled her lip disapprovingly, said sternly, ‘Have you been naughty, Mr Flynn?’
    He nodded eagerly. Saliva oozed from his mouth. ‘Very naughty, Mrs Lacey.’
    ‘Then we shall have to do something about it.’ She unhooked the cane from the wall.

Chapter 2
    For more than a month, Alice virtually ran Myrtle’s on her own. The girls took turns to give a hand on Saturdays and after school. Orla complained loudly that it was dead boring and the smells made her sick, particularly the ammonia, but sixpence a week was too good to miss. Fionnuala loved it. She would have done it for nothing, because it made her feel important. Maeve didn’t care what she did as long as she was left to do it in peace.
    Only occasionally did Myrtle put in an appearance. She looked terrible, usually wearing tatty carpet slippers, her face grey and mottled. Once she came down in her dressing gown, a filthy plaid thing without a belt. Alice turned her round and sent her back upstairs.
    ‘She’s lost her mind,’ one of the customers at the time pronounced. ‘I reckon it’s ’cos the war’s over. It was the war that kept her going. Remember