My father expressed his feelings better than me.
"Bloody Hell," he said.
Eleanor closed her eyes in disbelief. "Tom, that's terrible!"
"It's okay - I've got twenty five years in - I'll get a decent payout,… and I'll find another job." But my confidence was a bluff, a brave face. I really had no idea what I would do. It felt like I was riding a barrel,… and I was afraid.
My father was keen to emphasise the seriousness of my situation. "Another job? You'll be lucky. You're over forty."
I didn't feel over forty. And anyway what was wrong with being over forty? It wasn't as if I was going senile or anything.
"Wake up, Tommy, lad. You're on the scrapper."
"But they don't discriminate against age. They can't."
He shook his head wearily. "Tom, listen. Someone tells a twenty year old kid to jump and the kid asks how high? A bloke of forty's going to think twice, he's going to think about his family, about himself. Maybe he'll turn round to his gaffer who won't be much over twenty five anyway and tell him to fuck off. Of course they discriminate! I was in my fifties when I left the pit, but I might as well have been ninety the way they used to look at me when I turned up for an interview!"
I stared at him. This was the father I'd forgotten, the man I'd seen preaching a belly full of ire to a marshalling yard packed with bitter miners, the same man who'd hurled bits of coal in defiance at baton wielding riot police in the crazy days of the eighties.
"Jack's right," said Eleanor. "It won't be easy. You've got to think this through."
My father moved to the window and looked across to where a pack of ragged kids were kicking a ball up against someone's garage door.
"Little bastards," he said, almost to himself. It was a prelude, I thought, and I could tell by the look in his eyes he was thinking about something else. Then he told me Annie had telephoned, that she wasn't happy about selling the house, that I should go over and talk about it with her and the wide arsed Alistair. But I had already dismissed Annie from my mind and I didn't want to have to think of her again.
"I can't be bothered," I said, evasively.
"You have to go, Tom," said Eleanor.
My father nodded. "And Ellie had better go with you," he said." I don't want them taking you for any more of a mug than they have already. I'd go myself but with my temper I'd only make things worse."
I bridled a bit at that. After all, I was old enough to look after myself, but then I realised I hadn't made such a good job of things, and also I was afraid of them - of Annie and Alistair, afraid of what further pain they might inflict. The children? You'll never see them again Tom, and it's all your fault!
I found Eleanor later in my old room, sitting on the bed, a duster in one hand while she leafed through my old school sketch books. "These are lovely," she said.
"Oh, they're all pretty old. Look you don't have to come with me to Parbold. I'll be okay."
"Are you saying you don't need a friend? "
"I'm saying I'll be okay. "
"Let me be your friend, Tom." She paused on a charcoal portrait I'd done of Farrah Fawcett, one I'd copied from a photograph in the TV Times. "That's good," she said. "I remember that look she had."
The lines and proportions were precise, the definition of light and shade well rendered. I hadn't seen it for a while and, in all modesty, it surprised me,… not just the accuracy of it but also how well I'd captured her screen persona.
"Look at the date," I said in astonishment. "Nineteen seventy eight." I pulled another sketch book from the trunk I'd brought over from Parbold. Then I sank on the bed and handed it to her. "Now take a look at this one."
She flicked through the pages. The subjects were the same, and the inspiration - anything curvy, romantic and voluptuous,.. women,… plants, landscapes. The difference was in the dates, a decade or so later and in the style.
"They're fine," she said.
But she was being polite. The forms were not as well observed, the rendering of shadow and light was sloppy and hurried. The things I'd drawn had begun as serious observations, but had all ended up deformed and sterile, as if a vital sense had died.
"They're hopeless," I said "I didn't keep it up."
"It's a shame. Your dad said you were really into it at school, that you could have gone on and studied it at college. Why didn't you?"
"It all seemed a bit airy fairy. I reckoned maybe one in twenty art students went on to make a living at it. The odds were a bit better with engineering."
"This last one here says nineteen eighty seven - that's Princess Di,… "
"But I've made her look ugly. I'd completely lost it by then."
"You've done nothing since?"
"Just bits of sketches - nothing on the scale of these." I picked up the sketch book from my schooldays. "These," I said, "these are drawings."
Eleanor turned to the front page of the later sketch book. "Perhaps its because you didn't write Rachel's address in this one."
"There came a point when it seemed a bit foolish to carry on doing that. I suppose it was when I finally let her go."
"Oh, I don't think you've ever let her go, Tom."
"Sure I have."
"After what you did the other day? I don't think so! But you're right about one thing, you did lose something on the way from that book to this one."
"I grew up."
"No. You seemed more to lose your sense of poetry." She took up the early sketch book again. "This is poetry. And perhaps the poetry began to die when you gave up on the idea of Rachel."
"If that's true, there's not much I can do about it."
"Why don't you take it up again? I don't mean to make a living at it or anything,… I mean, just for yourself. For you, Tom. "She opened the book at the drawing of Farrah Fawcet. "See if you can't get back to this."
Chapter 7
Eleanor liked the Midget and had us drive the ten miles to Parbold with the top down, even though it was spitting with rain. Let me be your friend, she'd said and I was glad to, for she possessed such a precious air of serenity, almost as if she were sedated, which perhaps she was, some of the time. If only some of that serenity might rub off on me, I thought! Annie had Alistair, and the weight of her educated and articulate family behind her. Me? Well, all of a sudden it seemed I had Eleanor.
When we came over Parbold Hill the vastness of the plain appeared before us, its patchwork of towns and meadows stretching all the way to the sea some fifteen miles away. It had always felt good at the end of a long day to come home this way, to crest the hill and see it all laid out like that - but not any more. Now it was like standing at the edge of a precipice.
"You can see Ormskirk from here," she said. "Me and Phil - we were brought up in Ormskirk."
"Really?"
"But that was before," she added.
"Before?"
"Before I went crazy."
"Eleanor, you're the sanest person I know."
"Then you must be crazy too."
I knew little about her life before she met my father and she had offered nothing to fill in the gaps. Also, I'd always been too self conscious to probe, afraid of triggering some emotional response and, in a selfish way, not being able to cope with it, to cope with her tears, or with any deep seated need she might have.
There had been some trouble in her life - I knew that. You could see it in her eyes, sense it in the way she moved, in the strange way she dressed. There had been a spell in hospital, perhaps a long one - a breakdown of some sort, but whether it had been caused by a trauma, or just a sickness to which she was prone, like so much else about her,.. I did not know.
This was the first time I'd heard talk of a home, any hint she had a past at all. There were no parents, no aunts, no uncles, no friends from her thirty five years of life,… all cut out and gone - just Eleanor and the taciturn Phil, who'd tried and failed by his own admission to help her.
As we dropped down the mile-long hill towards the village,
the engine hit a peculiar resonance and the exhaust began to rattle.
"Sounds like the baffles are going," I said and as I spoke I was aware of my nerves tightening, aware that we were drawing nearer to Annie, to the source of everything that was slowly killing me. "Phil said he'd help me re-bore the engine. I've been getting some bits together - it'll be like new when I've finished."
"It'll be good for you to have a focus, Tom," she said, as she squeezed my arm. "But be careful about getting too close to Phil, eh?"
I made the familiar turn into Lindley Crescent to find Annie's Corsa and an old 3 series BMW parked across the gates. I'd lived there for fifteen years, painted the gutters, tended the garden and spent the last two summers block paving the bloody drive. All of a sudden though I felt like a stranger, and not entirely welcome.
I left the MG across the street and followed Eleanor up the drive. There were familiar voices, manic voices and the pattering of feet as the children came tearing around the back of the house. I had not thought I'd hear those voices, those energetic sounds today. Surely, Annie would have kept them away? What was she thinking, having them running around when all this was going on?
Stephen drew up short and pointed his little spade at me. "Where've you been?"
"Hi-ya Spud,… I've been helping Grandpa."
"No you haven't. Grandpa's at work."
"Sorry,… I meant Jack."
Then Gemmie appeared, slutched up to her elbows and with a headless Barbie in her hand.
"I've got a new friend," she said in her best, bossy little madam voice. "He's mummy's friend too because she lets him go to beddy-byes same as you." Then, oblivious of the knife she'd just stuck between my ribs, she turned wide eyed to the tall, black sheathed figure of Eleanor. "Hi-ya witchipoo." she said.
Eleanor opened out her arms and twirled slowly. "Hello little girl. Are there any spells you'd like me to cast for you?"
"Mend my dolly's head," she said. "Stevie pulled it off."
"Didn't,… "
"Did,… "
"Very well," said Eleanor. "Then shall we turn Stevie into a frog."
Both shrieked with joy at the idea and Stephen bounced away making croaking noises. Eleanor always seemed so natural with them it surprised me there had never been any children of her own.
By now the front door had opened and Annie was waiting. She had on a pair of jeans and a baggy sweater. She looked good, like she'd stepped from the cover of a magazine, except she also looked sour and as usual it tied my stomach in knots. It had me wondering what I could do to please her, to melt that sourness, to make her smile, to make her pleased with me.
"What's she doing here?" she said.
"Hi," said Eleanor. "It's lovely to see you too, Annie."
Inside, we found Alistair sitting on the sofa, his eyes darting nervously as if all he wanted to do was run. Annie sat by him and at once their fingers became entwined. I had a vision then of their legs similarly entangled - her lovely smooth legs wrapped around his thighs and his great hairy bum pumping up and down. I felt desperate and sick and made to back away, to run, but felt a timely hand grip my elbow. Then I turned to meet the secret and encouraging gaze of Eleanor.
"You already know Tom," Annie told Alistair. "And this is his… friend, Eleanor."
The word friend was spoken with a peculiar emphasis, at which Eleanor rolled her eyes and in spite of everything, she made me smile.
"I'm his step-mother, actually," said Eleanor, seeking to clarify things.
Alistair smiled uncertainly and it worried me that I didn't hate him. Why couldn't I summon up the blinding rage that should have come so naturally? After all, had he not deceived me? Had he not made love to Annie, made her moan with that delicious agony, when I hadn't been allowed to touch her properly in years?
Annie was sitting arms folded now. "Listen," she said. "I want the house. I want the bank accounts. I want everything. You can't refuse. It's not for me - it's for the children. You wouldn't deny them the security would you?"
Until now I hadn't thought about the financial side of things, not daring to raise my sights above the level of old sketchbooks and computers, so this came as something of a blow and seemed so unreasonable I could hardly believe she was serious. "Eh?… "
She remained grim faced. "I'm seeing a solicitor on Monday," she said. "I think you should do the same."
"Annie, you can have the house," I said, and I felt Eleanor stiffen beside me in alarm. "You pick up my share of the mortgage, as of this month. Fine. I can arrange that."
"What about the savings account?"
"Sure, that too. There's only a couple of grand in it anyway. It's yours. I'll switch my salary to another bank. We'll sort something out over the kids of course."
"No," she said. "You have to pay your share of the house. Do you think I can manage this place on my own?"
"But surely,… I mean,… I assumed since you'd started all of this, and since he was here, he'd be paying his share,… or you'd both be moving out,… moving somewhere else,… together."
This seemed logical and pragmatic to me. It might not have been what the law would advise or what we'd all finish up with in the end, but I thought it a good place to start - at least from off the top of my head.
Annie crumpled then. It was unexpected and it put me off driving my point home. She folded slowly into Alistair's lap and she cried. She hadn't a clue what was right or wrong. Life had been so simple for both of us until now. Perhaps that was how she'd viewed her affair with Alistair, too. Perhaps it had begun simply, with an innocent flirtation, then moved on to stolen kisses, then a hasty assignation in back of his car,… a hotel room, maybe.
But things were not so simple any more.
The last time I'd made love to her had been the result of a week of undignified pestering and even then, she'd just laid there quietly while I'd got on with it. I'd felt ashamed afterwards, almost as if I had raped her - which in a sense I suppose I had. It was hardly the sign of a healthy marriage. Sure, there had been a distance between us for a long time. Something had died, but only now, watching her with Alistair, did I realise any of this. We had been together because it was part of a pattern, a routine. We woke up, we saw to the children, we went to work, went to bed. We had long ago ceased doing it because we wanted to be with one another.
Eleanor stood up slowly. I saw Alistair looking at her. She puzzled him I think, as she puzzled most people, but also I believe the horny bastard was wondering how easy she was.
Finally he closed his eyes and shook his head. "I'm sorry," he said. "This is such a mess. We didn't mean for any of it to happen."
It was the first time I'd heard him speak. He had a northern accent, Manchester or maybe Oldham, softened by education. At last, I flared at him. "You mean you thought you'd just go on shagging behind my back?"
But it was a half hearted thing. He might easily have buried me with his retort, except Eleanor shot me a warning glance and stepped between us. Then the kids came thundering in, grinding mud into the carpet from off their wellies. It wound me up like it always did, but then I realised it didn't matter any more. It wasn't my problem. I'd no longer have to get on my hands and knees and scrape it up when they'd gone to bed. That was Alistair's job now.
Gemmie noticed Annie was crying, but didn't say anything and instead, looked to Eleanor for reassurance. Eleanor pointed her long, black tipped finger at Gemmie. "Pop and Crisps," she demanded. "Show me."
Unlike most adults, Gemmie was enchanted by Eleanor's eccentricity. "All right," she said.
I stuck it out while Eleanor entertained the children in the kitchen, but eventually they grew sensitive at being excluded and ended up jumping all over us. We got nowhere and I wondered if Annie was smart enough to have planned it that way.
Finally, I said we'd better leave it a few weeks while things settled down. But I knew even then, there'd be nothing to say. All our talk of an amicable solution meant nothing more than a desire that it would all just go
away without either of us having to get involved.
"You've some more stuff on the hall table," said Annie, as I prepared to leave.
"Chuck it," I said.
"They were photographs and things. I thought you'd want them."
"Just chuck the bloody things!"
But later, as I fixed up the hood on the Midget, I saw Eleanor carrying the stuff in a Morrison's bag.
We sat a while then, squashed shoulder to shoulder in the car as a sudden rain shower swept the street, great waves of it lashing down. I shivered, she put her arm around me and, instinctively, I leaned against her. It was a peculiar feeling and I had always been shy of doing it before, shy of touching her, but right then with the world in ruins and the rain bouncing off the rag-top, it felt like the most natural thing in the world.
"Annie hasn't a clue," she said. "She's floundering."
"But she'll be okay," I said. "Her dad'll see to that."
"I know. Jack's told me about him. He owns all those clothes shops."
"That's right."
"I went in one once - that place in Southport. It was all string vests and clown pants as far as I could see. Black was definitely passé back then, though I believe it's considered cool again now. Still, you'd better watch out, or you'll lose everything except your knickers,.. and probably those as well. You all right for money, honey? I mean is there anything just in your name?"
"I have some shares I can cash in."
"Got the certificates?"
"I think so. They're with all that stuff I brought over the other day."
"Good," she said. "Cash them. Don't bank them. Keep the money in a sock, anywhere it can't be traced. Then switch your salary like you said, as soon as you can. And draw it out the minute it's paid in. Every penny. Understand?"
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 4