Madame Barbara. Helen Forrester
times, been shown it, just to see the washbasins and the pretty wallpaper.
Considering the two women, the reclusive owner was left wondering at the extent of human optimism.
The greatest advantage of the house to Phyllis and Barbara was that, in addition to the washbasins in three of the bedrooms, it also had a complete, modern bathroom, and a washroom on the ground floor.
‘Perfect for a B-and-B,’ Phyllis breathed quietly to Barbara.
A servants’ lavatory outside the back door made a total of three lavatories, which, both women agreed excitedly, was remarkable. ‘Have to watch they don’t all freeze up in the winter,’ Barbara warned.
It took them two years to get every bedroom reasonably furnished, though it was surprising how well the modest pieces from their existing home looked when spread out. They went to bailiffs’ sales, where one could pick up chairs and tables for sixpence or a shilling each; and an estate sale yielded a massive amount of bedding and bedlinen for a few pence apiece, simply because the heirs wanted to get rid of it. The women completed the bedrooms one at a time, and immediately advertised them in the windows of local newspaper shops, at twopence a week, as superior bed-and-breakfast accommodation.
They risked near bankruptcy by buying new single beds from the Times Furnishing Company in Liverpool on monthly payments.
Because of their excellent new beds, they found an unexpected market amongst travelling sales representatives, a much less destructive clientele than families were. Burdened by suitcases full of samples as they travelled from city to city, usually by train, these men were always looking for places with good beds and a well-cooked breakfast; they ached with years of sleeping on ancient, hammock-like mattresses. The word went round about the comfort of Phyllis’s beds.
Phyllis also placed a modest advertisement in a holiday magazine. This attracted elderly couples from the London area, in search of easily accessible, inexpensive holidays, less noisy than those offered in Margate or Brighton, at a weekly rate which included midday dinner and tea. This meant a lot of extra work, but it paid quite well.
The nearby railway station, so useful to the representatives on their way to do business on Merseyside, also allowed holiday guests easy access to the entertainment of Liverpool and Birkenhead; it proved to be a great asset instead of a liability.
A few months after they obtained the house, Barbara had thankfully left her job as maid-of-all-work to a big family in Neston; keeping a bed-and-breakfast was much more interesting than going back to school, especially as some of the representatives were single young men.
Much to Barbara’s chagrin, her mother kept a very close eye on her. ‘This is a respectable house,’ she would say, ‘and you mind your Ps and Qs, me girl. And you’re going to night school, milady, to get a bit more learnin’.’
And to night school she went, at first protesting, and then quite happily, because she realised that the commercial subjects she studied would be of use in the bed-and-breakfast; or, better still, might get her a post as a private secretary, preferably to somebody rich and famous who would marry her.
Not long after they moved to West Kirby, her mother had given Barbara the job of tidying up the front of the house, which had once been a little flower garden.
‘Oh, Mam!’ she wailed in protest.
‘It won’t hurt you, luv. It’ll take you out in the fresh air,’ replied Phyllis firmly. The girl must help if they were to make a success of the place.
Not too sure where to start, Barbara weeded the cracked asphalt path between the gate and the front door. This attracted an elderly man pottering in the front garden of one of the houses across the road. He wandered across and admired her efforts to tidy up.
‘It’s a proper mess, miss, isn’t it?’
She agreed mournfully that it was, and that she had no idea how to make it look nice.
He suggested she use a sickle to cut down the very long grass, and offered to lend her one. He brought it to her and showed her how to use it.
Much to Phyllis’s amusement, he became her daughter’s friend and mentor. She worked under his instruction much more cheerfully than if her mother had told her what to do, and it was he who suggested that she attend the upcoming church fête, where people would offer for sale, quite cheaply, surplus plants from their gardens.
Armed with a shilling, she bought peonies from a middle-aged lady, who said she was Mrs Ada Bishop and that she lived over by the Ring o’ Bells, a pretty pub on the other side of the village. So she became acquainted with George’s mother long before she met her son. Mrs Bishop was a keen gardener, and suggested some pansies and lilies of the valley.
Barbara and Phyllis had had no garden when they lived in a terraced house in Liverpool, so this world of gardening enthusiasts was quite new to the young girl.
‘That place was beginning to be an eyesore,’ Ada confided to Barbara, as she filled an old seeding box with plants at a ridiculously low price. ‘I think it’s wonderful that you’re doing the garden for your mam. You’ll find you’ll love doing it after a bit. Just wait till them peonies come out. Now, all you have to do is make a little hole, put some water in it and cover the plants’ roots. Pat ’em down gently – and don’t forget to leave plenty of room for the peonies; they’ll grow really big.’
As Barbara told George, years later, ‘I never realised what would come out of it, I never did. She made me interested in flowers, and now I love the garden. I didn’t even know she had a son, ’cos you was away so early to get to work, and you was in Chester for ages. It was real funny when I met you at the Red Cross dance and found I knew your mam.’
Since the end of the war, Barbara had done her best to rebuild the garden. Again, it was Ada who brought her plants to set it up, Ada who had her own grief to contend with. She never said much, but she had tried to help Barbara, and, in return, Barbara hoped she was a bit of a comfort to her mother-in-law.
A week after they had moved out to the new house, Phyllis’s husband, Hugh Williams, had been informed of his change of address. In a letter posted from Sydney, he had approved Phyllis and Barbara’s idea of living by the sea. The front garden was looking quite decent by the time he returned from a six months’ voyage round the ports of Australia.
He nearly had a fit. He found he had a house far better than anything he could ever have hoped to live in, where strange men, whom he regarded with deep suspicion, came and went like some weird, briefcased merry-go-round. And his wife owed nearly thirty pounds to the Times Furnishing Company – just for single beds!
‘How did you get credit?’ he asked disbelievingly. ‘You’re only a woman.’
‘Charm,’ she replied, neglecting to tell him that her own father had chanced his savings and had co-signed with her for the purchase.
His little daughter, who suddenly seemed to have become a young woman, had produced a penny notebook, in which she had kept an account, something she said she had learned how to do in night school.
‘See, Dad. It’s not paying much yet, because we’re still buying stuff for it and paying the Times, but it’s broken even for the last three months.’ She grinned at him happily. ‘The word’s going round about it. And whoopee! You know, we can now charge ten shillings and sixpence a night for the high-class chaps from the big firms!’
Hugh expostulated, raged, to no avail, said his prayers and went back to sea. He did, however, give them one good idea: he suggested that, to increase their income, they rent part of the land round the house to a farmer, either for grazing or haymaking – which they did.
Either because of his prayers or the unremitted hard work and business acumen of the two women, the enterprise began to pay off.
None of them gave credit to Phyllis’s grocer father for the coaching he gave them. He made numerous helpful suggestions to limit theft, produce meals quickly, buy wholesale.
‘Grandpa talks ’is