Queen of the Mersey Read Online Free PDF Page A

breathlessly.
    And that was how Roddy, Laura and Hester Oliver came to live in Bootle.
    ‘Would you like some cocoa, darling?’ Laura asked.
    ‘I’d love some.’ Roddy was blinking tiredly.
    She slid carefully off the sofa, put a cushion under his feet, and went into the kitchen. It was a fine big room, large enough to hold the table where they ate and she cut out material. It had a cast iron range, but she only made a fire once a week to heat water for the washing and for them to have baths – the tin bath hung on the wall in the yard. The cooking she did on the relatively modern gas stove.
    She had no complaints about their accommodation. The landlord was very pleasant, though it would be nice if the flat had been wired for electricity. Sewing by gas light hurt her eyes and she’d noticed Vera Monaghan’s house had electricity.
    They had the entire bottom floor, comprising three rooms, a kitchen, and even an indoor lavatory, to themselves. The only common area was the hallway, which they shared with upstairs. After living in one room for so long, it seemed the height of luxury to have their own, separate bedroom. Hester slept in the smallest room at the back.
    No, the flat was fine. It was its situation that she found so depressing. Glover Street must be the most miserable street on earth, added to which the woman who lived in the flat above, Mrs Tate, was truly horrible, screaming at her poor daughter every night when she came home from work, usually very late, almost midnight. The girl was a fragile little thing, who looked about twelve, with a withered arm, and was only seen on her way to and from school. Laura had tried to speak to her a few times, but the girl looked scared out of her wits and didn’t answer. She didn’t seem quite all there. Mrs Tate rudely ignored her attempts to pass the time of day.
    The kettle boiled, she made the cocoa, and took it into the living room where Roddy was almost asleep. She sat in an armchair so as not to disturb his feet.
    ‘Will you get paid for today?’ she asked.
    ‘There’s no reason why I shouldn’t. I’d finished the damn window when the ladder broke.’ A rung near the top had snapped, the wood was rotten, and he’d slid down the rest, breaking more rungs in the process. ‘I’ll be fit for work again in a few days, and Colm should pay me for the time off. It’s his fault, not mine, that the ladder broke. It should have been ditched ages ago. I’m fed up working myself to a standstill,’ he said indignantly, ‘while Colm sits back and takes the profit so he can drink himself into a stupor.’
    Colm Flaherty’s ‘business’ was scarcely worthy of the term. He was little more than an odd-job man, who hadn’t wanted a partner, but an assistant to do the most awkward, difficult work. If Colm was sober, he might paint the occasional door. Despite this, he was the most charming of men, popular with everyone.
    Laura couldn’t help but like him. If a landlord wanted a job done, the first person they approached was the silver-tongued Colm Flaherty. Roddy, conscientious to a fault, had been carrying him ever since he’d started. The ex-public schoolboy was frequently seen pushing a handcart loaded with ladders, paint, sheets of glass, and mysterious lengths of piping, up and down the streets of Bootle.
    Thinking about it, Laura could easily have cried. Instead of adding to their small savings, since moving, they’d been using them to subsidise Roddy’s appallingly low wages. She had an idea that would at least make a slight improvement.
    ‘You could start your own business, Roddy,’ she said excitedly. ‘Be your own boss. I could write cards and put them in shop windows, “Odd-Job Man Available”.’
    ‘It hardly seems worth it, Lo.’
    ‘Why not?’ she asked, disappointed.
    ‘Because any minute now the war will start and I’ll be called up. Hopefully, I’ll never push a handcart again.’
    ‘When’s Hester coming, Mam?’ Mary demanded.
    ‘If you’ve asked that question once, you must have