‘There you are then, now move yourself.’ Biddy squeezed past Malcolm into the hallway.
‘It’s a surprise to see both yourself and Babs out on the step this morning,’ said Eric, who didn’t often see Malcolm.
‘I can’t speak for Babs,’ said Malcolm, ‘but I’m here to stop whoever the bugger is keeps pinching my milk.’ He glanced furtively from side to side, up and down the Dock Road. ‘Three mornings this week I’ve been missing a pint of gold top. Doesn’t take the steri, only the best for my little thief.’
Biddy’s voice called down the hallway, ‘Come on, Malcolm, the kettle is on. I have to be at work soon and we need to make a list for Mary.’
Malcolm rolled his eyes. ‘I knew today was going to be a bad day,’ he said.
‘My advice is,’ said Eric, ‘just do as you’re told. It’s far easier in the long run.’
Malcolm turned to make his way down the hallway, saying, ‘She means well.’ And both men knew that if it wasn’t for Biddy, lonely Malcolm would have disappeared inside himself long ago.
*
Eric felt a sense of anticipation as they headed towards the corner of Nelson Street and the mare increased her pace; she knew what was coming next. In Nelson Street lived a customer who always had a special treat waiting for Daisy Bell. He could still hear his Gladys’s words ringing in his ears as he had left the yard: ‘Don’t you dare be giving anyone credit in the four streets, do you hear me? Especially not Peggy Nolan on Nelson Street. We sell the milk, we don’t give it away.’
Gladys had no idea that he stopped and had a cuppa every morning of his life with the war widow, Mrs Trott. It was a mystery to him that no one had ever shopped him to Gladys, although he always made sure he left Maggie Trott’s well-scrubbed front step just before the back gates began to click open and bang shut as women ran out of their homes, fastening coats and headscarves, checking pockets for change to light a penny candle to the dead and to answer the bells calling them to first mass. They left fires catching in grates and children sleeping whilst they prayed for ships to arrive, work to be had and money to be tipped into the bread bin.
Eric and Maggie had been taking a ritual cuppa together every morning since 1944, when she was already a young widow, her husband having fallen in battle. Eric, injured and invalided out, had wished every day it had been he who had taken the bullet, just to wipe the pain from Maggie Trott’s eyes. Sometimes he glanced down the road, expecting to see Gladys running towards them, waving a rolling pin and screaming abuse, and he wondered what his reaction would be if she ever told him to stop taking his break with the widow Trott.
The dairy house Eric and Gladys lived in was situated halfway along the Dock Road and that morning, Gladys had sent him off with her usual kindly words. ‘The last time that Peggy cadged a pint off you, she took four months to pay. You don’t see her round here, offering to pay, do you? Oh no, if that woman had a shred of self-respect, she would be offering to muck out or sterilise the bottler, wouldn’t she? To pay off her debts with a bit of graft. But not her, and she still owes us for eight pints. As lazy as her bloody husband, big Paddy. Thinks I’m here to pour our milk down the neck of her brats for the love of it. Well, we’re not a bleedin’ charity, Eric. Not that I’d want her round here mind, lazy ’aul bitch.’
There she was, complaining Peggy never came around to pay off her debts and then, in the next breath, saying she wouldn’t be welcome. If Eric had a pound for every time someone had told him opposites attract, he wouldn’t be on the cart today; he would pay Captain Conor to sail him away to somewhere exotic where he could sun himself and drink as much rum as he liked.
‘Steady, girl,’ he said as the excited mare almost broke into a trot. He pulled on his ciggie and turned his gaze left down towards the Mersey. The mist hugged the river like an unfurled bolt of dove-grey chiffon that was slowly sinking below the surface, but he could still make out the activity down below, though few were around. It would be another half an hour before the dockers’ klaxon rang out. He watched as the tug captains made their way into the administration huts for tea and orders, the swooping seagulls waiting for the fish to come in from further north. Tug captains were the only men who rose at the same ungodly hour as Eric.
Eric looked right and saw Kathleen, mother to Jerry Deane, who had arrived in Liverpool from the west coast of Ireland, not long after her daughter-in-law, Bernadette, had lost her life in childbirth. A woman of wisdom, who had built a reputation for reading the tea leaves, she had become a pillar of the
