Shattered Dreams Read Free

for ages, Josie. We used to have a lot of fun when you came over to ours.”
    “No fun now, Irene. I’ve been married to Lennie for three months. In fact this is my last week working. I’m picking my cards up on Friday. Lennie says I’ve not to work anymore.”
    “Oh, is that because of the rule that married women have to give up working?”
    “Not really. The manager said I could stay as long as I want to because they’re a bit short of typists where I work. But Lennie says I should be expecting by now and it must be because I’m rushing off to work every day that I’m not. Anyway, he’s put his foot down. Master in his own home and all that business. How’s life treating you, Irene, and how is Isabel, to change the subject? What are you doing so far from home?”
    Irene explained that she was keeping her Aunt Miriam company because her uncle had died recently. She went to work every day from Irby, where before she used to travel from Wallasey. That she had met a young man who lived locally and she hoped to marry him one day and Isabel had divorced her husband and was seeing another man.
    It appeared that Josie earned her living as a typist and Irene asked if typing was difficult to learn and were there better wages to be had? Better than a shop wage had been the reply, though boring as hell as Josie was a copy typist and you had to go to night school to learn the skill.
    Her half hour break at lunchtime found Irene in a long queue at the Employment office in Hamilton Square that day. Full of hope that she could be directed to a new job with better pay had spurred her to scurry along the high street, eating the sandwich that her aunty had made as she ran.
    “Do you have qualifications?”asked a superior young female clerk, glancing over her spectacles at Irene, as they faced each other through the glass panel later. “Did you pass your Matriculation? Speak a foreign language? Employers are being rather choosy at the moment. We are starting to have a worldwide depression as you probably know.”
    Irene didn’t know, although the signs were there to see if she looked around for them. There were more men hanging around on street corners, the bus that brought the workers to the flour mill opposite her house wasn’t as full as it had been and Saltbury’s, being a department store that sold a lot of luxury items, wasn’t very busy either.
    The clerk suggested that she looked for a different kind of shop work. It was said that the new Co-op was incorporating a food department and, if she still wanted to improve her future prospects, there was always night school, though it didn’t come cheap.
    Irene left the place feeling quite despondent. She blamed her mother for her lack of qualifications, not having the good education that her sister had had at the convent, when her father had been made redundant at the nearby shipyard called Cammell Lairds.
    Eddie’s mother, Gladys Dockerty, sat with her friend, Hilda, in the restaurant at Saltbury’s department store. They were drinking coffee from dainty china cups and chatting about mutual friends from the Rotary Circle. Both women wore expensive coats trimmed with fur tippets, over smart ankle-length dresses and T bar shoes. Their shingled hair was covered with neat cloche hats and both wore gloves on their manicured hands.
    “My dear Gladys,”said Hilda, elegantly dabbing at the corners of her mouth with a snowy white napkin.“How are the plans for the wedding progressing? You were telling me last time we met that it was to be held at St. Winefreds in Neston and afterwards at the Victoria Hotel.”
    “Yes, that’s right, Hilda. Of course it is too early to put the invitations in the post, but naturally you and Charles will be there.”
    “A wedding is so exciting. Have you decided on what you will be wearing? It is so important, isn’t it, when you are the mother of the bride? I can’t wait for Emily to find herself a beau. What about Eddie, your eldest? Is he