by Nancy Revell
As Claire asked his father about his work before retirement, Dr Parker’s thoughts couldn’t help but stray to Helen. He wondered how she was getting on with her mother after everything that had come to light. God, he missed her.
As she sipped her wine, he looked at his own mother, chipping in every now and again with some scathing, smart-alec comment.
His gaze returned to Miriam. He’d often said to Helen that their mothers were similar. Seeing them in such close proximity to each other, he realised just how alike they really were.
As they left the restaurant to catch a taxi back to Ryhope, Dr Parker stopped at the bottom of the steps and took Dr Eris in his arms. He kissed her.
‘Thank you for tonight,’ he said.
Dr Eris kissed him by way of reply.
This evening could not have gone better if she’d planned it herself. She had been expecting to have to juggle mother and son, ingratiating herself with the mother whilst at the same time staying in the son’s favour. But it had not gone at all as anticipated and any balls she’d expected to have to keep in the air had been taken from her. Thank heavens for narcissistic mothers.
The fact that John’s mother had been quite rude had gone in her favour. It had endeared her more to John. She had seen it in his eyes. The way he was protective of her in the face of his mother’s bitchiness. And the cherry on the cake was that Dr Parker senior obviously thought the world of her. When he had been talking about his life as a surgeon in the ‘good old bad old days’, he’d quietly slipped in a comment that left Claire in no doubt that he would be more than happy to see his son married to such a ‘fine, intelligent young woman’. She hoped Mrs Parker hadn’t heard him otherwise the poor chap would be getting an earbashing all the way home.
Dr Parker took hold of Dr Eris’s hand and squeezed it as they sat in the back of the taxi.
She’d managed his mother brilliantly – and stopped him losing his own temper into the bargain. His mother had always exasperated him, but whereas before he had been able to keep relatively calm, since the start of the war he’d found it increasingly difficult to keep a civil tongue when in her company. Having Claire there had kept the evening on an even keel. And what’s more, she had his mother down to a T. You’d have had to be blind to see that the two women did not like each other, not one bit. And that suited him down to the ground.
He wondered for a split second how Helen would have reacted to meeting his mother; it would probably have been him calming her down. He doubted they would have made it through the meal without fireworks.
But he pushed his thoughts of Helen back. Far back. It was about Claire now. He had made his decision on the afternoon he had delivered Polly’s baby. He turned his head and kissed Dr Eris on her neck.
She put her hand on his leg; her touch was gentle.
As they turned into the long driveway that led to the asylum, he wondered whether it was time to take their courtship a step further.
Chapter Forty
Saturday 11 December
‘Ma’s on about me organising Artie’s christening,’ Polly said, pulling a face, ‘“before he’s in short pants”.’
Bel looked at Polly sitting in the frayed armchair, feeding Artie.
‘I heard her,’ Bel said. ‘Something about “Artie’ll grow up to be a little heathen if he doesn’t get some holy water spilled on his head sometime soon.”’
Polly laughed. ‘I reminded her that Artie is only fourteen weeks old – not that she paid a blind bit of notice … Anyway, where’re you off to?’ she asked, as Bel pulled on her winter coat, scarf, woollen hat and gloves. ‘The Antarctic, by the looks of it.’
‘Might as well be, judging by the weather out there,’ Bel said, nodding her head over to the window that was rattling with the force of the wind and rain. ‘Vanity will have to be sacrificed for the sake of being warm and dry – or relatively so.’
‘Where yer off to, Isabelle?’
They both looked to see Pearl standing in the hallway, unlit fag in one hand, umbrella in the other.
‘I’m going to the library to get some books out for Lucille. The school has got them in a frenzy about Christmas already and LuLu wants books on Santa Claus, Rudolph the reindeer, St Nicholas and the baby Jesus – in that order.’ Bel got her gas mask and handbag. ‘Maisie’s meeting me there, and we’re going for a cuppa and a chat somewhere nearby.’
Pearl was already making her way to the door. ‘Tell her to pop in ’n see me in the pub when she’s done – get a proper drink.’ Pearl cackled. ‘I’ve not seen her for ages.’
Bel looked at Polly and mouthed ‘One week.’
‘I will, Ma, but don’t be too downcast if she’s not got the time.’
Bel heard the door shut.
She walked over and kissed Artie on the forehead.
‘He smells divine,’ she said, closing her eyes for the briefest of moments.
Then she kissed Polly on the head, something she never normally did.
‘Love you both so much.’
She hurried out of the kitchen before the tears that had started to prick her eyes showed.
When Agnes came back from Beryl’s with Lucille in tow, she found Polly and Artie fast asleep. She was glad of the quiet. It had already been a long day, and it wasn’t even teatime. Beryl had just got notice that her husband was a POW. The poor woman had been overcome with relief that he wasn’t dead. How expectations had dropped. Audrey and Iris hadn’t been about, which meant they’d been able to have a good chinwag. The GPO had the girls working all hours in the run-up to Christmas; the festive season meant more post and the continuing need for conscription meant a dwindling workforce.
Coming into the kitchen, Agnes took one look at her daughter and grandson and gently removed Artie from his mammy’s arms and put him in his crib in the front bedroom. She let Polly sleep. She would reprimand her when she woke about coddling the little boy too much. It worried her that baby Arthur had come into this world without the presence of his daddy, although her worries were assuaged a little by Joe’s love for the child and the time he spent with Artie. He might not have his daddy presently, but his uncle was a fair substitute – and hopefully just a temporary one.
For the baby’s sake, as well as Polly’s.
When Polly woke up, hearing her ma in the scullery and realising she had put the baby in his cot, she went to check on him. Walking into the front bedroom, she saw that Artie was just starting to stir.
‘Right, time for a little trip out,’ she said, hauling him out of his crib.
She looked at the clock. If she got a move on, she’d catch the Reverend Winsey before he had his tea.
It was time to set a date. And she knew exactly what day she wanted her son to be baptised.
A perfect day for so many different reasons.
Maisie hurried up the stone steps of the Hendon Carnegie branch library on the corner of Toward Road. She had walked past the distinctive single-storey building with its porthole windows and Edwardian baroque architecture countless times, but this was the first time she had ventured inside.
Shaking out her umbrella, which had nearly got blown inside out, she walked through the main door and into the foyer, where she was immediately hit by the smell of polished oak and noticed a very beautiful, intricately carved wooden counter. Seeing the back of Bel’s blonde hair, she automatically shouted out her name.
‘Shh!’ The librarian managed to make the sound even louder than Maisie’s greeting; the young woman’s glare was equally ferocious.
‘Sorry,’ Maisie whispered, waving over at Bel, who had turned around. She had an armful of books. Maisie pointed behind her to the foyer, showing she’d wait for her there.
A few minutes later, Bel joined her. Her shopping bag was weighed down with the maximum number of books she had been allowed to take out with her library card as well as Agnes’s and Lucille’s.
‘I think that lot will keep you going until well into the New Year,’ Maisie joked.
She was not a great reader herself, although she had become quite obsessed with anything written by F. Scott Fitzgerald and had vowed to go to America one day.
‘I can’t believe there are only two weeks to go,’ Bel said. ‘Although going by the level of Lucille’s excitement, you’d think it was two days.’
‘Come on.’ Maisie pulled her into the calm of the little café just a few hundred yards down from the library. It wasn’t quite up to her standards, but the weather today was awful.
‘Any port in a storm, eh?’ she said, opening the door.
Within a few minutes, they were as warm as toast and sipping hot tea. After chatting about Lucille and her continuing love of school, and then about Polly and the baby, Maisie tentatively edged the conversation towards the subject of Charles Havelock. It was, after all, her real reason for leaving the comfort of Lily’s on such a wretched day.
‘So, how are you feeling, you know, about everything?’ Maisie gave her a look.
‘By everything, do you mean not falling pregnant?’ Bel dropped her voice; she didn’t want the elderly couple sitting at the next table to hear. ‘Or the other?’
‘Both,’ Maisie said, putting her teacup back on its saucer.
Bel let out a long sigh.
‘Well, there’s nothing I can do about not falling. Can’t force it to happen, can I?’
Bel’s words were tinged with anger and Maisie wondered if Lucille starting school was making matters worse. The gaping hole where another baby should have been was being stretched wider by Lucille growing up and becoming more independent.
‘And the other?’ Maisie asked.
Bel groaned. ‘I can’t seem to let it go. Can’t let the sleeping dog lie. I keep poking it.’
Maisie looked at her sister. Their ma had been right.
‘You know Ma never let me play near Backhouse Park?’ Bel said.
Maisie shook her head.
Bel let out a short, sharp burst of mirthless laughter. ‘Not that Ma knew where I was most of the time, but I did what she said and never went near there.’
‘I can guess why she didn’t want you there,’ Maisie said.
‘And you’d guess right,’ Bel said, her voice low and deadly serious. ‘Ma knew that man was poisonous … that whoever came within spitting distance of him was at risk of being defiled by him in some way. At least Ma did one good thing for me – she kept me away from him – kept me away from his toxicity.’
Which is exactly why Ma wants you to steer well clear of him now.
‘Thank God he never had anything to do with my upbringing.’ Bel almost spat the words. ‘Look at Miriam – what a horrible woman. Look what she’s doing to poor Hope, banishing Jack over the border. Blackmailing him and Gloria.’ Bel had told Maisie what Miriam had done. ‘And then there’s his wife, Henrietta – in the local nuthouse.’ Bel knew that Pearl would have told Maisie about her former employer. There was nothing her ma kept from her favoured child.
‘Look at what he’s got away with – his entire life,’ Bel ranted quietly, leaning forwards so others could not hear.
Maisie listened to her sister and for the first time she saw their mother in her and it shocked her.
‘And what do you want to do about it?’ Maisie asked.
‘I don’t know,’ Bel said, sitting back, exhausted by her own vitriol. ‘I’ve thought about humiliating him publicly – you know, telling the world what he did to Ma and how I’m the product. But I know he’d only deny it and then it’d be me and Ma who would be the humiliated ones.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ve thought about telling the world he’s a liar and that his wife’s not dead but locked up in a madhouse, but he’d still wriggle his way out of that, wouldn’t he? He’d probably have people feeling sorry for him. Make it seem like he was protecting his wife.’
Bel’s eyes narrowed.
‘I’d like to see him suffer a long and painful death,’ she said, ‘but unfortunately I’ve not got it in me to make that a reality.’
Thank God, thought Maisie.
When they said their goodbyes outside the café, Maisie told Bel that she’d better go and see their ‘auld ma’, as ordered.
As Maisie gave Bel a hug, she wanted to say something that might make a difference, but she knew there was nothing meaningful she could say. She’d suffered herself at the hands of men – men not dissimilar to Mr Havelock. She had dealt with them in her own way. Bel, however, had to find her way – and sooner rather than later, before her feelings became all-consuming.
When Bel said goodbye to her sister, she had lied about wanting to do a shop along Villette Road. Instead, she hauled her bag of books to the top of the street, turned right onto Ryhope Road and walked along to the main entrance of Backhouse Park. As though in defiance of her ma’s long-ago words of warning, she strode through the park, daring the evil spirits she had imagined living there as a child to come and get her.
Striding along, her bag of library books banging against her legs, she thought of Kate. Poor Kate. She had suffered terribly at the hands of the nuns simply because she’d had the misfortune to be orphaned as a child. It had been the same with Charlotte and Rosie. They too had suffered because they had lost their mam and dad. Rosie at the hands of her sick uncle. Charlotte because she had been deprived of any kind of parental love or care.
And then there was her own ma.
All of them had been preyed upon by animals – men and women who did what they did because they could. Because there was no one to stop them. Because they could get away with it. So much hurt and heartbreak – so much pain caused by those who victimised the vulnerable. She felt the return of the anger that always seemed to be there, waiting in the wings, ready to hurry onto the main stage whenever it was given the chance.
She had always thought good overcame evil, but lately she had realised that good and evil were equally potent. And with that knowledge had come a feeling of responsibility that she must stop the continuum of evil so that others would not be contaminated. How she could do that, though, she was still trying to work out.
Bel felt the fire of vengeance burning furiously deep inside her. And she knew nothing but retribution would quench the flames.
When she came out the other side of the park on Ashbrooke Road, she walked around the corner and along Glen Path.
Reaching the place where her mother had first told her the truth about the man who had fathered her, she stopped and stared at the huge detached red-brick house. There was a van at the front, and she watched as two young lads in brown overcoats hauled a massive Christmas tree out of the back.
Starting early with the Christmas decorations, Bel thought bitterly. She inspected the lush green tree and thought how Joe would be lucky to find one half the size, and luckier still for it not to have shed most of its needles before he even got it into the house.
In her mind’s eye, she could see herself walking up to the large front door and banging on it loudly – demanding that the man who lived there come and face the result of his past depravity.
But she didn’t. Instead, she walked away. She would be back. She had made herself a promise. And she was not going to break it.
When Maisie jumped off the tram and hurried across the road to the Tatham, she thought that if she was Bel, she would get her vengeance by taking the bastard to the cleaners. She’d make him pay by hitting him where it hurt the most – in the pocket.
As she walked into the main lounge area, she waved over to Pearl, who grabbed two glasses and poured good measures from the expensive bottle of brandy Maisie had asked her to keep behind the bar as she couldn’t abide what she called the ‘cheap cooking brandy’ they served in most pubs.
Pearl grabbed her fags and took the drinks over to the table in the corner where Maisie was settling herself. She didn’t need to tell Bill she was having a break – Maisie was here and when Maisie turned up, everything and everyone got dropped like a bag of hammers.
‘So, what’s the verdict?’ Pearl asked
, putting the large bulbous brandy glasses down on the table and lighting up a cigarette.
‘Not good,’ Maisie said, gravely. ‘Not good at all.’
Chapter Forty-One
Monday 13 December
‘It’s Polly and Artie!’ Dorothy sprang up out of her chair at the sight of Polly bumping the door to the canteen open with her back and dragging the grey Silver Cross that used to be Gloria’s through the doorway. One of the workers sitting at the table nearest to the entrance jumped up and kept the door open, which wasn’t as easy as it looked. The wind had been blowing in from the North Sea all night and had not run out of steam.
By the time Polly reached the women’s table, they had made room for her.
Hannah was first up to greet Artie.
‘Can I?’ she asked, nodding down at the baby.
‘Please do,’ Polly said, taking off her headscarf and shrugging off her coat.
‘Well, this is a surprise,’ Rosie said.
‘You going stir-crazy at home?’ Gloria laughed. Polly had confessed to her on numerous occasions when she had come to drop Hope off that much as she loved her baby boy, her mind and body missed work.
‘Make that past tense, Glor – gone crazy,’ Polly chuckled as she sat down.
‘Well, yer look good for a crazy person,’ Angie said, getting up to fetch a clean cup and saucer for their former workmate.
‘You and the bab all right, pet?’
It was Muriel. She had brought them over a fresh pot of tea.
‘We’re good, thanks, Muriel. Apart from being nearly blown away by these winds.’ She nodded over to her baby boy. ‘Say hello to Artie.’
Muriel wiped her hands on her pinny and took the baby off Hannah. ‘Eee, he’s a bonny lad. Just like his dad.’ She pulled a funny face at Artie. ‘And his ma, of course.’
‘You got some news?’ Martha asked. There had to be a reason for Polly battling through the winds that had been sweeping and swirling their way through the town and into the shipyards. It was not the most enticing day to have a trip across the Wear – especially with a baby.