Chandlers Green

by Ruth Hamilton

  How could he go home to that? Home? That place wasn’t a home, hadn’t been a home in years. Things had improved once he had tricked the old man into handing over the reins, but that had all been ended. Sergeant bloody Martindale would be living right on the doorstep, his upstart daughter aspiring to marry into an ancient family, the dynasty that had founded the village, a long line of Chandlers that was traceable right back to … when? To before the Flemish weavers had arrived to show Bolton how to make cloth, to the time when candles had been dipped, not moulded—

  He sat bolt upright. If that Martindale girl married Peter, she would be his daughter-in-law. He would be related, albeit only by marriage, to a man who had earned his living by trudging through the streets with rubbish and donkey-stones, balloons for the children, sometimes goldfish, marbles or toffee apples. No! But how to stop it? He needed a drink – he needed several. How many more days? Could he get out early? Where had he left his bank book, that account with his personal savings totted up?

  Sweat collected on his brow, poured down to sting his eyes. She had done all this. Jean, the fragrant one, she who hadn’t the faintest idea about growing older with grace, she who could scarcely count past five, the only woman he knew who could lose at cards while holding four aces and three face cards. She had gathered forces around herself, had girded her undesired loins against the return of her own husband.

  He balled a fist and crashed it into the opposite palm, pain making him flinch as flesh bruised flesh. ‘Damnation,’ he cursed. ‘I have to get out of here.’

  The door swung inward. ‘Coffee, Mr Chandler?’

  ‘Coffee?’ he roared. ‘Coffee? What do I want with coffee when I’m being ruined? What good is coffee going to be when my own wife is plotting against me?’ He glared at Sister Mary Vincent, wished he could bite back his words. He had to be good, had to act his part, must avoid being certified again. ‘I’m sorry,’ he managed, though the lie almost choked him. ‘Yes, thanks. And would you check the date when I can go home?’

  ‘Of course.’ She placed cup and saucer on a wheeled tray that straddled the bed. ‘And I hope you manage to stay off the drink, Mr Chandler. Drink causes more trouble than enough, sure it does.’

  He gritted his teeth into a false smile, kept the grimace in place until the Irishwoman had left. Women, bloody women, he was drowning in them. And the queen of all these witches was a few miles away, living in his house with her coven as protection. Frying pans? They’d doubtless be sitting round a cauldron, making a little manikin into which they could stick their poisonous barbs. He would not have been surprised to learn that they had taken hair from his brushes, nail clippings, sweat from his brow if necessary. ‘Witch-bitch,’ he whispered before drinking his coffee.

  There was no point in trying to make a break for it. He had been judged insane by two doctors and the certification had been extended. It was important that he remained calm on the exterior, because calm meant eventual freedom. For over six weeks he had curbed his temper and it had not been easy. They were worried about his liver, about his kidneys, about his heart. They had syphoned off enough blood to fill a gallon jar and he had swallowed sufficient pills to furnish a chemist’s shop. He had been X-rayed from every possible angle – they should be worried about radiation poisoning, never mind the booze.

  Time passed so slowly here. And, while time elapsed, Jean and her cronies were settling themselves in, were preparing for the return of their enemy. He needed to be clever and he was clever, had always walked one step ahead of the rest. He must think, think, think. They were women, that was all. A few women, one old man and two lily-livered boys who clung to their mother’s skirts. There was nothing to fear, but he needed a plan, a sure-fire way of guaranteeing his safe return to his rightful throne. Well, he had several days and he would use them well. It was time to prepare his next move.

  Jeremy envied Peter. Peter, the quiet one, he who had been over-shadowed by his bolder twin, had taken strength from Marie Martindale, was suddenly more self-assured and relaxed. Josie, on the other hand, shored up no-one, was a pleasant, witty but rather distant girl. And she wasn’t here, hadn’t bothered to take the day off work to celebrate the Martindales’ move.

  Peter, plonked on a tea chest in the midst of organized chaos, looked completely at home, but Jeremy felt like an onlooker, a guest who would be treated with politeness rather than with interest. Everyone else seemed content. Aggie flitted about with plates and cups, Mother poured tea, the older Martindales, squashed with their neighbours from Emblem Street on a large couch, were arguing happily about damp-proof courses and new fireplaces. Colin, Marie’s brother, who had only just arrived, was standing next to Peter, while the lovely Marie handed out paper napkins and forks.

  Aggie looked … she looked different. Unable to work out what had changed about the girl, Jeremy gave his attention to a ham and tomato sandwich, though his mind was really elsewhere. Pol had gone out, Grandpa was in his room and that left just poor old Aunt Anna to deal with his delinquent sister. He should go home, but could think of no excuse that might sound valid. There had been sufficient explaining to do regarding Meredith’s absence.

  Jean rose to her feet and pointed to a stack of paintings in a corner next to the fireplace. ‘Those look lovely,’ she exclaimed.

  Leena blushed, but her husband was up and away before she could make any reply. He prised himself with difficulty from his too-small space and said clearly, ‘She did them.’ The pride was obvious as he held up two of the watercolours. ‘And she gets them out of her head, not from photos or from sitting outside looking at stuff. It started when she was in the hospital, didn’t it, love?’ The last three words were directed at his wife.

  Leena found her voice. ‘Yes. It was called occupational therapy. With TB, you have to do something to pass the time, so I picked painting and sewing.’

  ‘She was good at sewing before she ever went into the sanatorium,’ he insisted, ‘but the drawing and painting teacher said she’s got natural talent.’ His chest expanded as he spoke. ‘My Leena’s what they call a primitive genius. We don’t know what it means, but she got hung in Manchester.’

  ‘You’ll get hung if you don’t sit down, Dad,’ laughed Marie. ‘Look at Mam’s face.’

  ‘That’s not hung, it’s hanged,’ replied Alf, ‘if you mean she wants to execute me. Anyway, it’s time she stopped hiding her light under the bushes.’

  ‘That’s a bushel,’ Marie grinned. ‘One hides one’s light under one’s bushel, Father.’ She spoke in a fashion that might have been labelled by her parents as gob-full-of-marbles.

  Alf pretended to take a swipe at her. ‘You get your kids educated and they throw it back in your face. We should have put them in the mill, Leena.’ He held out his hands for all to see. ‘Look at them,’ he ordered. ‘Even me calluses have got calluses. Survivors of war, these hands, and that’s nowt to do with Hitler, it’s with piking about collecting folk’s rubbish all these years just so my kids could have a better life.’

  ‘You’re a martyr,’ his daughter told him.

  ‘I am that and me wife’s an artist.’ He returned to the couch and sandwiched himself back into a space scarcely large enough to hold a child. ‘It’ll have to be synchronized tea-drinking,’ he sighed. ‘Aye, we shall need to work out a system.’

  Jeremy finally saw what his brother had seen. Here was a family that was welded together thoroughly, each component essential to its fellows, the whole functioning like a well-oiled machine. This was happiness; this was what Peter wanted and Jeremy began to understand why. For endless years, Alf Martindale had worked to provide for his loved ones. Here was his reward, a comfortable home – well, it would be comfortable soon – a place to which he would retire, a legacy for Colin and Marie. Father, born into old money, had expressed no ambition beyond a wish to be left alone to drink himself to death. That was the difference.

  ‘Another sandwich?’

  He looked at Aggie. What had she done to her
self ? She was the same, but different. Perhaps she had made a journey of her own; perhaps her escape from fish and chip shops had been her own catalyst, because she was suddenly … altered. ‘Thank you.’ He took another sandwich and perched on a stool.

  Jean was in the corner with the paintings. She picked up each one, studied it, then returned it to the company of its fellows. ‘Lovely,’ was her final pronouncement. ‘My daughter should see these. Are you still going into business?’ She addressed Jeremy. ‘Because if you are intending to enter the area of home decor, you might give some thought to Leena’s work – if Leena wants to sell it, that is.’

  ‘Who’d buy it?’ sputtered the reluctant artist.

  ‘I would,’ replied Jean. ‘And many, many more would, too. Your husband is right, you have a rare talent and don’t dare allow anyone to try to refine it. This is clean, honest portrayal and your use of colour is wonderful.’

  Leena didn’t know about the wonderful use of colour. In fact, she understood little when it came to the art of painting. It was just something she did when she was … oh, it was daft … when she was the other Leena. That first time she had picked up a brush in the hospital schoolroom, she had been lifted away from everything, herself included. Forced to leave her early work behind in case it carried germs, she had simply picked up at home where she had left off – a stick of charcoal, sometimes a soft pencil, then paint and water. ‘It takes me out of myself,’ she said quietly. ‘It helped me when I was ill and it helps me now. I forget to worry.’

  ‘I understand,’ answered Jean.

  Leena dared not voice the truth, because the truth was scary and silly. When she worked with watercolours, it was as if she changed souls. Hours would fly by, would seem like minutes. She went into a different dimension where time was measured by some invisible mechanism that bore no relationship to earthly time. Yes, it was daft.

  ‘You should paint every day,’ suggested Marie.

  But Leena could not paint every day. If she did, nothing else would be achieved, and— And what? There would be just herself and Alf, no kids to cook for, no Elsie to chatter with. ‘I might,’ she replied. ‘But I have to get my bearings first. And I shall be helping you, Aggie.’

  Aggie smiled broadly. ‘If you want to paint, you paint. We shall manage.’ But Leena knew that she would have to be there. Come the day, they would all have to be there for Jean Chandler.

  It was the hair, Jeremy decided. And he had never noticed how pretty Aggie’s teeth were. Yes, she had done something with her hair.

  Alf was the one who framed the words. ‘What have you done with all them lovely curls?’ he asked his daughter’s friend.

  Aggie flushed slightly. ‘Lovely? You should try dragging a brush through cinders, Mr Martindale. It was getting so as I needed a gardener’s rake – or a combine blinking harvester. I must have twice as much hair as everybody else. When God saw me in that queue, He must have thought, “Right, I’ve all this rusty old wire to get rid of” – and He gave it all to me.’

  ‘It’s a beautiful colour,’ insisted Jean. ‘It’s Titian. There are women who would give an arm for hair like that.’

  ‘Well, they can have it and welcome.’

  Alf persisted. ‘But what have you done?’

  Aggie glared at him in pretended annoyance. ‘I’ve had a perm.’

  It was Leena’s turn to be puzzled. ‘Nay, I’ve had a few perms in my time, but I came out a damned sight curlier than when I went in.’

  The new housekeeper took centre stage, cake slice in one hand, milk jug in the other. ‘Right. Perms. I read this in a magazine, so bear with me.’

  They bore with her.

  ‘A perm breaks your hair. It bends it and breaks it.’

  Leena, alarmed, patted her own neat coiffure. ‘Did you know that, Elsie?’

  Elsie hadn’t known and she said so.

  Aggie picked up her thread. ‘It alters the molecular structure.’ Determinedly, the small girl ignored a glance that passed between Elsie Ramsden and Leena Martindale – if they couldn’t keep up, they could at least keep quiet. ‘Then the neutralizer glues it back together again,’

  ‘Eeh,’ breathed Elsie, ‘the things you learn when you’re having your dinner, eh?’

  ‘So, I had a perm,’ concluded Aggie.

  ‘A backwards perm,’ added Marie.

  ‘Yes.’ Aggie touched her smoother thatch. ‘We just missed out the curlers and plastered it flat against my head. Right? Any more questions? Only my cake is getting stale and I’ve made another pot of tea.’

  ‘That’s us told,’ whispered Elsie.

  ‘Aye,’ replied Leena. But she was looking at Aggie and Aggie was not looking at anyone. She was especially not looking at Jeremy Chandler. For another thing, the girl had lost some weight. Leena smiled inwardly. Would it be a double wedding? And what about Josie …?

  It was a job and a half. Anna, whose energy level was remarkable for her age, sat exhausted on the bathroom stool. In the bath, her great-niece was looking at her with round, frightened eyes.

  ‘It has to be done now,’ said Anna. ‘If you carry on like this, you will go the same way as your father. Remember what he did, Meredith. Remember how poor Sally died, know that drink did it, that your father is lost beyond retrieval now. He will drink again.’

  Meredith closed her eyes. Her head pounded as if it contained the bass drum from a military band. She wanted to scream, needed to tell Aunt Anna to shut up, but any more noise would kill her. Everyone was against her – Peter, Jeremy, Great-Aunt Anna – even Aggie had started to look at her sideways. It was just a bit of sherry, for goodness’ sake, a drop here and there to help her get through the day.

  ‘I could talk until the cows come home,’ continued Anna, ‘but the only person who can help you is you. Open your eyes, madam.’

  Meredith obeyed, though she allowed her eyelids to rest at half mast, because the full picture of Aunt Anna in her over-sized tweeds was not exactly cheering.

  ‘I believe that it is not too late. You have only been drinking for a couple of months, so you can stop. Look at me, girl!’

  ‘Please don’t shout.’

  Anna nodded, causing several strands of grey hair to fall forward, and she swept them away with an impatient hand. ‘That pain in your head is caused by dehydration. That’s the ridiculous thing – the more you drink, the less moisture you contain. Your kidneys are screaming for water; your liver will dry and shrivel until it has the consistency of shoe leather. Even your brain will wither away like an old prune.’

  Meredith decided to fight back, though the effort proved costly. ‘And your lungs are black,’ she snapped, her head aching anew when her own voice reverberated inside her skull. ‘So don’t lecture me about bad habits.’

  Anna agreed wholeheartedly. ‘Yes, I have an addiction and yes, it might kill me. But it does not cause me to act like a brain-dead fool. Just think about your father – he will never reach my age. He lives to drink and drinks to function. What about your business ideas? What happened to all that?’

  ‘I’m still thinking,’ sighed the girl in the bath.

  ‘You’d think better and faster with a clear head.’

  ‘And the funeral slowed things down.’

  Anna pulled the remains of a cigarette from behind her right ear and lit it. ‘The funeral is just another excuse – no, hear me out. The funeral was caused by your father’s drunkenness. Now, he is coming home in a few days. We shall have two alcoholics in the house. I was reading some letters the other day – bills and accounts and so forth written by our ancestor, James Alexander Chandler. He had the curse. He could not add threepence to a shilling some days – I can tell when he had taken drink, and he’s been dead for a couple of hundred years. And here we are with the same thing, your father, you—’

  ‘I can stop.’

  ‘Can you? Then why haven’t you stopped? You should be at Claughton Cottage with your brothers and your friends, but no, you are in the bath with a
terrible hangover and a mouth like blotting paper. Am I correct?’

  Well, of course. Everyone was correct, was right, was sure.

  ‘Am I correct, Meredith?’

  ‘Yes.’ That was the trouble – everyone else had the right idea and being the only one in the wrong was a lonely place to live. It had started with the first drink. She had felt wonderful that one time and she had tried to achieve that state of euphoria ever since. And it didn’t work that way. But how to stop?

  ‘I didn’t say it would be easy, sweetheart.’

  The tears hurt, the sobbing almost killed her. Her whole body was sore because she had abused it. Where was God when she needed Him? And Great-Aunt Anna never called anyone sweet-heart.

  Anna brought the stool to the bath, sat down again and held the weeping girl in her arms. It was a wet business, but it was worth it. ‘If you only knew how much I love you,’ whispered the old lady. ‘I always wanted a daughter or a granddaughter and you are the nearest I can come. Meredith, I would lay down my life this very day to save you.’

  ‘Oh, Aunt Anna, I am so sorry.’

  ‘No. You are not sorry, you are strong. This will never be easy. If you go to a pub with your friends, you cannot drink. You cannot take wine with meals. Remember how you always refused?’

  ‘Yes. I was afraid of drinking.’

  ‘Then God is on your side, because He tried to warn you. Look.’ She pushed the girl away and stared into her eyes. ‘We shall open that shop or whatever. We shall make candles again in the town and I shall be there for you and with you for as long as I am spared. Your mother needs you, I need you, your grandfather needs you.’