Harriett smiled. She had already realized that Mr Manning would be a pushover and that she was halfway to achieving every outcome she wanted from the meeting. She’d had no idea that it would be quite that easy or that the man from the Liverpool Corporation would be so gentle.
‘I have to apologize for asking you to come to the Priory. It is just that there are so many of us and your secretary thought it might be better if you came here. Also, I thought that if you did so, you could see the committee in action. I know there was a great deal in the press regarding an unfortunate incident that took place here last year, but I wanted you to see that that is all behind us now. The church is a happy church and the people involved are committed to this community.
‘Now, come, Mr Manning, come and meet my brother, Father Anthony, and Sister Evangelista, and my friend who is a teacher at the school, Alison, who was only married on Saturday and should be on her honeymoon now, but that’s a different story. You will like them all, I promise you.’
Ben fell in line beside Harriet, unaware that she was deliberately walking more slowly than usual. She had seen the caliper without his having been aware.
Ben, who was painfully shy around women at the best of times, had lost his tongue completely.
‘And here is everyone,’ she said, leading him to the study where her brother sat behind the desk.
Amid the clatter of chinking china and teaspoons in sugar bowls, Harriet introduced Ben to the people sitting around, beginning with Father Anthony and finishing with Nana Kathleen.
Ben knew nothing whatsoever about the church or its ways. He felt uncomfortable, as though, whatever he said, he would surely put his foot straight in his mouth and show his ignorance.
‘Now then,’ Harriet said, having introduced everyone, ‘I have written to Mr Manning to explain to him that we are delighted that a children’s nursery is to be built on the bombed-out wasteland, and the library too. I have explained that we also understand that it is for the benefit of the people living in the tin houses, which, Mr Manning, I know are the prefabs, but everyone around here refers to them as the tin houses. However, as the convent plays such a huge role in the community, including running the school, I am sure Mr Manning agrees with me that there must be ways we can work together to a mutual benefit.’
An hour and a half later, Benjamin Manning made his way back to the bus stop. He had never before spent such a happy time in the company of others.
They were such joyful people. And Harriet Lamb, surely such a beautiful woman could not be single? He smiled ruefully to himself. Miss Lamb. He had granted her every concession she had asked for. He had nothing in his briefcase that could defend him against those bright blue eyes and her lovely smile. All the way home on the bus, he relived every moment, every gesture. He closed his eyes and summoned the sound of her voice.
Benjamin felt sad that his injuries would prevent him from asking Miss Lamb to have tea with him at the Lyons Corner House one afternoon. From living a normal life as most men did. From having a wife. He knew he had to banish her from his mind. A woman as lovely as she was would be ashamed to be seen walking down the road with a man wearing a caliper. Harriet Lamb did not need a cripple on her arm when she could do so much better.
As he looked out of the window on the journey home, he did not see the river, the sprawling warehouses or the ships, waiting patiently at the bar. As the bus turned up the hill into Edge Lane, the familiar terraced houses and the children playing in the streets were just a blur. He was somewhere else, in an imagined life. One he had never dared to visit since the day he was wounded. He could hear the voice of another, one that did not belong to his mother, calling him to breakfast. A voice he had heard for the first time just a few short hours ago.
He did not notice the solitary tear of loneliness that ran down his cheek.
When everyone had left the Priory and only Father Anthony and Harriet remained, she was unusually quiet.
‘Has the cat got your tongue?’ asked Anthony.
‘Don’t talk about cats and body parts,’ said Harriet and tapped him on the arm.
‘Heavens, I forgot,’ said Anthony, shuddering.
The murdered priest’s body had been discovered, just as Molly Barrett’s cat had walked into the street, carrying his langer in its mouth. This was now a source of secret jokes amongst the children on the four streets and the subject of not so secret ribaldry down in the Anchor pub.
‘I was just turning over in my mind, who else we should ask to be on the committee for the nursery.’
‘May I make a suggestion?’ said Anthony. ‘Ask Maura Doherty. That woman needs something to occupy her mind. I think that she could benefit from focusing on anything other than the loss of her daughter. It might just be the thing to bring her out of herself and to help her heal. I feel sorry for the twin lads. Little Harry and Malachi always look a bit lost. I know Declan and Kevin are a different pair altogether, but if something doesn’t give to restore a bit of happiness into that home, I can see those two going off the rails before long. Declan runs riot at the school and I know Sister Evangelista is loath to say anything to Maura and Tommy because of all their troubles.’
‘Would you like me to have a word, Anthony?’
Harriet loved the Dohertys. The hours she had passed helping to heal Nellie Deane had brought her close to the families affected by Kitty’s death. She had spent a great deal of time with Maura when she helped the neighbours to look after Maura and Tommy.
Harriet and Anthony had never met Kitty, but they had heard enough from Sister Evangelista to know that there was something they weren’t being told. But that didn’t matter. They were here to minister and to love their neighbours and that was what they would do. Harriet might not have been holy, but she was good.
‘I don’t know, Harriet. Maybe you could have a gentle word about the twins at the same time as you ask her to help?’
Harriet smiled. ‘I will find a way. Come here and give me a hug.’
Benjamin Manning came unbidden into Harriet’s mind again.
‘What are you thinking of, Harriet? You surely aren’t this pensive about a nursery committee?’
Sometimes Harriet thought Anthony could read her mind. ‘Well, I was just thinking what a nice man Mr Manning was.’
She blushed.
‘And what a pity we hadn’t met years ago. Useless thoughts, as no man as handsome as he is would want to date a woman my age, so never fear, they were just idle imaginings.’
‘Brought on by Alison’s wedding on Saturday, no doubt,’ said Anthony, looking at his sister with great care.
They told each other everything. They were the closest of siblings, and had been made even more so by the recent loss of both their parents. They were also bound by the fact that it was silently understood, Harriet as a spinster would remain with Anthony. He felt guilty that his sister had spent the best years of her life nursing first his father and then his mother, whilst he had been away at the seminary.
He felt guilty that she had sacrificed her life. He wanted to do all that he could for her. That was why he was determined to take his sister with him in the role of housekeeper. He could not leave her alone in Dublin in their parents’ big house. Anthony was the first priest ever at St Mary’s to have a housekeeper as well as a full-time cleaner, but he didn’t care. Where he went, his sister would go too.
‘I suppose thirty-five is rather late,’ Anthony replied. ‘But you never know.’
A modern priest in the city of the Beatles, Anthony was trying to be helpful, but he realized it wasn’t working.
He sat down at his desk to work, and Harriet went into the kitchen to make their tea. As she filled the kettle, Harriet felt a pain stab her in the chest.
She thought of how happy Alison Devlin had been at her wedding. Alison was also old to be getting married. She had complained about it often enough, even confiding that she thought she might be too old to have children. Was it so impossible for someone Harriet�
�s age to find a husband?
As she stood over the sink, her tears fell and not for the first time. They were hot tears of loss and frustration for the life she knew she could never have, that of a wife and a mother.
Even as she cried, she knew it wasn’t just because of the wedding on Saturday. It had something to do with that lovely shy man, with the kind eyes and the caliper, which she could see hurt him as he walked. The gentle man who was softly spoken and nervous, and who had told Sister Evangelista he wasn’t married.
She looked down and smiled as Scamp licked her feet. At that moment, they heard Little Paddy and Harry banging on the back door.
‘Well, look who’s here? The boys to take you on your walk, little fella.’
And within seconds, the kitchen was filled with boys and dogs and the noise that Harriet wished had always been a part of her life.
13
STANLEY WAS TOO afraid to switch on the lights.
The back door had opened, with difficulty and a loud creak, into the kitchen where they had held their crisis meeting after the priest had been murdered. Stanley remembered the men who had sat round the table on that night. Most of them he didn’t know, but there were some that he had recognized.
Austin had told Stanley that the key to survival was anonymity. If no one knew who each other was, no one could tell anyone anything.
Austin had now been arrested. Would Austin snitch on Stanley?
Stanley had never touched that Daisy from the Priory, but Austin had and she knew who he was. Austin was fucking mad, always taking risks. He had told Daisy he worked at the children’s hospital. He had been showing off, pretending he was a doctor. The priest had Austin’s address and details in his diary. Stanley knew that. He had seen it. No one had Stanley’s. He had told no one anything. Still, he was taking no risks. If Arthur said this was where he should be, in the safe house, this was where he would stay.
‘The bishop will be on his fucking way to Panama now if he’s got any fucking sense,’ Arthur had said to Stanley.
‘Does the bishop know she has come back?’
‘He fucking must do, he’s the one who had her in hiding. The bishop isn’t going to let her fucking escape without doing a runner himself, although how the fuck he let her get away from wherever he had her, I don’t know. I would have fucking drowned her myself. All the stupid policeman had to do was push her over the rail. Fucking yeller bastards. Now we are all at risk because the bishop couldn’t do his job properly.’
‘Bit hard for bishop to get someone topped, I suppose?’ Stanley had said.
‘What? A bit harder than shagging her when she was only twelve? Yeah, right.’
Remembering there were candles in the hearth of the range, Stanley felt his way across the kitchen. He took the lighter out of his pocket and flicked the flint into life.
The dirty, shoddy room lit up, with images even Stanley didn’t want to see.
The floor was covered in newspapers and near the fire a grubby toy doll lay discarded. The flame from the lighter was reflected back to Stanley from the cold, glass eyes.
He lit a candle from the store in the fireplace and began to unpack the bag he had brought with him, placing items one by one on a wooden table that stood at the side of the sink. Corned beef and spam, condensed milk, a packet of tea. He assumed he would be safe to visit the shops. There would be no one looking for him around here. Even if Austin spilt the beans, he wouldn’t remember this house, or know that Arthur would send him here and use it as a safe house.
Austin might direct the police to the hospital or Stanley’s home, but not here. When he thought of his mam and how distressed she would be, he felt sick.
Maybe he would sneak out in the dark and nip back to see her. He could make up a story, although he knew not what, and tell her he had to lie low for a while. As he sat huddled in the glow of the paltry fire and his solitary candle, he realized he might have to spend many hours doing very little else. He had managed to light the range, using bits of wood he had found in the garden. Some were windfall branches that had fallen way back in wartime, when the house had last been inhabited. The huge tree in the middle of the lawn had shed a pile large enough to keep a fire ticking over in the range for at least a couple of weeks. In the coal store, he had found the best part of a half-hundredweight of coal, which he would use sparingly.
Arthur had sent no message, nor had he called in as promised. This made Stanley feel even more nervous as the day went by.
Days later, he ran short of provisions, and was almost sick with worry about his mother.
‘Where the fuck is Arthur?’ he said to himself over and over as he paced up and down in the dark back kitchen of the bomb-damaged house. The one trip out that he had made to buy further supplies had alarmed him and he didn’t want to have to do it again.
He had slipped out to the shops the day after he had arrived, just before they closed, when shopkeepers were packing up, distracted, thinking of their journey home and putting tea on the table. He had used the big grocery store before the green on Breck Road, just down from Holy Trinity church. The shelves had been piled with good things to eat, but Stanley had no idea how long he would have to make his money last.
His eye was immediately caught by square metal bins with plastic lids, along the front of the long wooden counter, full of every imaginable kind of broken biscuit. He hadn’t eaten since the previous day and his stomach growled as the smell of custard creams filled his nostrils. His mouth began to water. He took a brown paper bag and slowly went from one bin to the next, filling the bag. Keeping his head down, he handed it over the counter to the man in a white overcoat to be weighed.
‘Anything else I can get for you?’ the shopkeeper enquired as Stanley continued to look in the bins, as though fascinated by the contents.
‘A quarter-pound of tea, a pint of sterilized milk, a pound of sugar.’ Stanley still didn’t look up.
Armed in addition with beans, bacon, bread, cheese and twenty Players, he hung around the green until it was dark when he could return to the house, entering through the back door, unseen by neighbours.
Arthur had said he would call on Stanley’s mother to tell her that she must not, under any circumstances, contact the police about her son’s sudden absence and that she was not to panic. Stanley knew she had never met Arthur and would be out of her mind with suspicion and worry. He was all she had and he meant the world to her. She depended upon him for everything. Without his wages this week, she would be more than a little anxious.
Stanley squatted down on his haunches in front of the range, waiting for the water in the enamel pot to boil. He had found it in a cupboard, covered in dust and cobwebs.
He couldn’t stop himself from worrying about his mam. In amongst the mouse droppings and the old newspapers scattered over the terracotta-tiled floor, he made the decision; as soon as it was dark, he would catch the bus back home, just to see if his mam was OK. He would slip in through the back door and stay just a few minutes, long enough to sign his bank-book so that she could take out any money she needed from his savings and to collect a few things.
Then he would take the night sleeper to Edinburgh and, once there, move up to the highlands. He could work as a kitchen porter for a year or so, until everything had died down. When it was safe, he would return home to his mam.
The enamel pot on the range began to bubble softly. Stanley took it off, using discarded newspaper to protect his hands from the heat of the handle. He tipped some of the tea leaves into the pot and stirred them with a stick before adding the sterilized milk. For the first time in days, he felt his panic begin to subside.
He had a plan. He was in control. He would be fine and so would his mam.
Back at Stanley’s home, his mother had placed a tea cosy over her best Royal Doulton teapot, after pouring Howard a cup of tea as he charmed her with the tale of his recent wedding.
‘Our Stanley never wanted to get married, you know. I tried to persuade him,
but he’s never been interested. Mind you, I doubt there has been a woman born, who could be as good to him as his mam has.’
The bright blue budgerigar, in the cage inches from Howard’s head, had hobbled to the end of its perch and now stared curiously at Howard, with its head on one side.
‘He’s a good lad, our Stanley. Tips his money out onto the table every Friday night as soon as he walks through that door and no man could be more devoted to his work than our Stan. He makes me knit teddies to take in for them kiddies, you know. There are very few men as good as our Stanley.’
‘I’ve spoken to his employers, who think very highly of him,’ said Howard.
‘Did they say why they had to send him to another hospital so quickly?’ she asked. ‘It is all very strange. A man from his work called to tell me what was happening. I gave him Stanley’s clean clothes and everything but I can’t understand why Stanley didn’t come home himself first. The man said Stanley had taken a child in an ambulance to another hospital down south and he would be staying until they returned to Liverpool. Typical of our Stan, that is. I bet no one else would do it. He would have volunteered. That’s just what he’s like, you know. He loves them kids, he does.’
Howard drank his tea, feeling sorry for the mother of the sick pervert he was determined to catch. Poor woman doesn’t have a clue, he thought.
‘Well now, the thing is, I am afraid I’m not allowed to tell you anything other than that we need to ask Stanley some questions. He isn’t in any trouble, mind. It is all a bit top secret, to do with a case at the hospital. Stanley has been a great help to the police, but we need to speak to him as soon as he gets back. So what I will have to do is leave this police officer here in your house, while you are asleep, to keep you safe until Stanley returns. You must be very nervous on your own with him being away.’
‘Well, I am, but what will the neighbours say? They will think our Stan has done something wrong, won’t they? Is that really necessary?’
‘I am afraid it is. Stanley has been doing some good work for the hospital, but there are a couple of bad lads who work there and we can’t catch them without Stanley’s help. It won’t be for long. I spoke to the doctor at the hospital, and he tells me Stanley should be home any time now.’
The Four Streets Saga Page 81