"I don't get it."
"Anyone with the right authority can get their hands on computer digits, Tom. Cash is harder. With cash they have to physically make you hand it over. Don't give in. Don't make it easy for them."
"You sound like you've done this before."
She smiled mysteriously, then gave me one last encouraging squeeze. "Let's get out of here. " She said. Then she eyed the houses around us with distaste. "You don't need this place any more."
As I drove, she began flicking through the stuff she'd rescued, stopping eventually at an old form photograph. "That's you! Just look at that hair, you scruffy beggar! I bet your poor mother had to bite her tongue, sending you out looking like that."
The engine was knocking and spluttering, struggling against the brutal incline of Parbold Hill. By the time we crested the summit, I fancied I could hear the engine's death rattle, prior to a blown head or a smashed valve. After coaxing it on, I glanced over to the picture on Eleanor's lap, then pulled in suddenly so I could take a closer look. It was one face in particular that had taken my eye. She was standing on the row behind me - bright eyed, proud, smiling.
It was Rachel.
Though I was not aware of having retained the memory, it came back to me now and I lived again the morning the photograph had been taken - the lads all jostling and mucking about and the girls standing patiently, looking on, their interest in us hidden behind masks of disdain.
Eleanor seemed to approve. "So that's her!"
"I tried to work it so I was standing right behind her. I had this idea that every time she picked herself out of that picture, I'd be right there - or that her parents would see it and say to her 'who's that fine looking young man?' and 'why don't you invite him round to tea?'"
She laughed. "Poor Tom. You really had it bad."
"The photographer ruined it," I went on. "He wanted me sitting down on the front row because I was so tall."
Eleanor continued admiring the picture. "So, there she is! Oh, she's very pretty, Tom."
"She was. Who knows what she looks like now?"
"I was beautiful too," she said. "At that age."
"You still are," I told her.
"No. I meant on the inside."
"So did I."
She shook her head. "You don't know me, Tom."
"My dad married you. You can't be all that bad."
"Your dad's very kind."
"No, he's a grumpy old git and you're a saint to put up with him."
"He doesn't mean it. That gruffness,… it's just an act. He understands things very well. He's really very sensitive."
But these were things I already knew. "If you say so."
"When we met, he knew he was my only hope. I could offer him nothing in return - except my company. I owe my life to him."
"Don't run yourself down, Eleanor. The way I see it, it was you who saved him."
She smiled. "When you let your guard down, you're just like him, you know? Don't let this business with Annie harden you or change you in any way, Tom. Promise me. I like you exactly the way you are"
I blushed, flattered to think anyone had been aware of me, that anyone would even want to know me. "I'll be fine," I said, and I hid my embarrassment in closer scrutiny of the picture.
It was a very good photograph - taken by a large format camera, the likes of which we don't see much these days, and the detail was superb. Already I was thinking I could scan it into my father's PC and get a decent blow up of her face.
"Anyway," said Eleanor. "What's green and oozes out from under a rusty old car?"
"I don't know - antifreeze I suppose. Why?"
She raised a delicately pencilled eyebrow. I groaned. Sure enough, the radiator had burst.
Chapter 8
I remember how much I'd worried about buying the house. Maybe I was a slow starter but at the age of twenty six, the most complicated thing I'd ever done before was buy a car. It wasn't so much the money and the thought of what I'd be owing the Building Society. It was more the complexity - the surveys, the solicitors, the stamp duty, the contracts,… and a feeling I simply wasn't big enough to cope with all that arcane detail. But of course everything just seemed to fall into place. There were people whose job it was to understand these things for me.
I suppose I should not have been surprised then to discover the breaking up of a marriage was equally routine. From the moment Eleanor introduced me to Mr. Hawksworth, of Hawksworth and Barker on Saint Thomas' road in Middleton, I realised I just had to play my part. There was a well established procedure in such matters, or so Hawksworth assured me. He'd put the papers in order and write the necessary letters. That was his job, what I'd be paying him for.
"So, me and Annie, we just sort of withdraw from the ring and let you get on with it?"
He was a plump, round faced man in his sixties, and he possessed a relaxed, confident air. "In a manner of speaking, yes," he said. "I'll contact your wife's solicitor." He looked down at the official and, I'd thought ominous, letter that had dropped through my letter box that morning. "Yes, it's a Liverpool firm - I've dealt with them before. Terrible business of course, very sad. You have my deepest sympathy. There will be an appointment in court regarding the settlement of your finances, and it would be wise for you to attend that, otherwise you may put your mind at rest. Everything is in hand, Mr Norton."
It seemed a fashionable thing, to have a solicitor. "You'll get a letter from my solicitor," people would say, a proprietorial tone in their voice as if referring to some old family retainer who hung on their every whim, straining at the leash to pounce on anyone who dared cross them. The reality of course was somewhat different. The last solicitor I'd seen had been about buying the house and I don't think we'd spoken for more than ten minutes, some scruffy haired, seedy chap who'd only been interested in the fee and hanging on to my deposit for the house for as long as possible. "It was in hand," those were his words as well, as if to say: "What was I worrying about? Now go away and let me get on with something else".
Hawksworth knew Eleanor from some previous business, though what I could not imagine and it was she who'd brought me here after she'd found me sitting pale and drained nursing the letter in my lap that morning.
"He's all right," she'd assured me on the way over. "He's a gentleman. He'll sort you out."
Afterwards, she bought me coffee and cake in the tea rooms on Main Street. It was disconcerting, I thought, the way people looked at her. It wasn't just the way she dressed, it was the way she moved, the way she held herself. Sometimes I imagined she seemed to float, as if a part of what tied her to the ground had been lost.
We sat face to face, huddled like conspirators over our table.
"Do I embarrass you?" she asked.
"What? Don't be daft. I'm sorry if I was staring. It wasn't really at you. It was more at other people, looking at you."
She thought about that for while and I was concerned I'd offended her - not thinking clearly, still in a bit of a daze after the interview with Hawksworth.
"I know I look a little weird," she said. "I have this thing about feeling invisible. I like to know people can see me, but sometimes they go too far. I just wish they wouldn't gawk. Children can't help it, but those old dears over there,… ." She turned and the gaggle of gawking old dears snatched their eyes back to their table top.
"They can't help it," I said. "And Gemmie thinks you're wonderful."
She smiled fondly. "Gemmie's a love. She has a look of Jack, don't you think?" Then her face darkened. "As for Annie, she thinks I'm an old man's whore. They all do."
"Ellie,… ."
"Well, why wouldn't they? And those old dears over there would say so too if they knew."
"Ellie,… I shouldn't be hearing this."
"And don't call me Ellie,… . Everyone calls me Ellie, since I was a little girl and I've always hated it - it's like they can't be bothered with my proper name, like they can't be bothered with me."
"I'm sure th
at's not true."
"You always call me Eleanor, though. I've always liked that, Tom. There are three syllables to it and you take the time to pronounce every one. Don't change, don't let the way others call me, or think of me, influence you. Promise?"
There was a sensitivity there, I thought - a first glimpse of a darker side to her. I glanced away, awkwardly, wanting to know, wanting to hear her story but feeling inadequate and somehow unworthy.
"I promise," I said. "Now, let me pay for these."
I called the waitress over and pulled out my wallet. It fell open with the newly enlarged and computer enhanced picture of Rachel uppermost. The waitress, a pleasant middle aged motherly woman, fastened upon it at once. "What a lovely looking girl. Your daughter?"
Before I could say otherwise, Eleanor answered for me. "She's our eldest. Isn't she pretty?"
"Ah,… bless. How old?"
"Fifteen."
"Mine's that age. Poor thing. Thinks she's got it all worked out,… but she doesn't know the 'alf of it does she?"
This was Rachel we were discussing and it came a shock when I realised it was true: that's all she was, just a child - the photograph, like my memory, freezing her in time. Pretty though she was, she was not sexually alluring. She was just a skinny, flat chested, fifteen year old school girl.
Outside, I waited on the street corner for ten minutes while Eleanor visited the butcher's shop for our tea. She was the most unlikely housewife, I thought, but then were any of us what we seemed? When she returned, she linked arms with me and we headed back to the car. I was unused to human contact, even with Annie who had shunned holding hands for as long as I’d known her. But Eleanor was tactile and her closeness, her warmth, was like a healing balm to me now.
"Thanks," I said.
"For what?"
"Being a mate."
"What are mother's for?" she replied. "But I'm worried you seem to be distancing yourself. Yesterday with Annie and Alistair, anyone else would have ripped his head off and you just sat there like you'd been invited round for tea. I thought it was a bit weird."
"Can you imagine me ripping anyone's head off?"
"No, but you seem more concerned about bending to suit whatever it is that Annie wants."
"I don't know what Annie wants. I wish I did."
"It simple, Tom. What Annie wants is the hunky Alistair sitting in your place, and without disturbing anything else in her life. So, what about you? What do you want?"
"I don't know. Annie, I suppose. I want her to say it was all a big mistake and tell me that she loves me."
"Do you? Really?"
"Why not? I mean, that's what it's all about isn't it? Growing old with someone and doing your best for the kids?"
"Is that all you think your life has to offer?"
"What else is there?"
"Are you still in love with her?"
"Who? Oh,… Annie. I suppose I must be,… " But even as I said it, I knew I had already proved to myself I was not.
I looked across the road at a doddery old couple - their arms linked as they made slow but mutually steady progress against a tide of pedestrians heading the other way. They'd probably done their courting in the war years, I thought,… seen more heartache and upheaval than any of us could imagine, and they were still together. What was it about us these days that made us so volatile, so eager to move on to pastures new?
"I thought we were doing okay," I said. "People manage don't they, I mean even if love dies they still manage a sort of affectionate companionship or something. You can't have everything."
"Annie wanted more, Tom. She wanted excitement, love, sex,… Sorry, I’m not trying to say you’re unexciting,… "
"No, you're right. We didn't have any of those things, not even the sex, well not lately anyway. I thought she'd just lost interest. I thought it was something that happened to women as they neared forty, and I'd have to learn to live with it. Anyway, whatever I want, or thought I wanted, it's obvious I'm not going to get it, so isn't it easier on everyone, especially me if she gets what she wants? Did you really think Alistair was hunky?"
She rolled her eyes. "Of course he was. I also got the feeling he would have had my knickers off in five minutes if I'd let him. Bit of a lad our Alistair, I think - trust me, women have an intuition about these things. So, he's going to hurt Annie, maybe even before the ink's dry on your divorce papers."
"You think so? You think maybe it's worth waiting a bit? You think it might blow over?"
"I don't know for sure Tom, but you've got to think really hard about whether, or not you feel you can ever trust her again."
"I know,… . So I'm, not a hunk, then?"
"Are you asking me as your mother?"
"Whatever."
"Not every woman want's a hunk, Tom. Maybe for a quick shag they do - pardon my French. But the less hunky types sometimes provide other things - things that are perhaps more important to a woman,… to the right woman."
"I'll take that as a no, then."
"By the way," she said, handing me a large paper bag. It was delicately patterned with flowers and smelled of potpourri. "I bought you a present."
Inside was an expensively bound sketch book. I didn't know what to say at first so I flipped through the virgin sheets and ran my fingertips over their surface. It was the finest quality paper, better than anything I'd ever owned. I was deeply moved. "Eleanor,… this must have cost a fortune."
"Well, I'm not short of a bob or two."
"I'd be afraid to make a mark in this - it's beautiful."
"Make your mark," she said. "And when it's full I'll buy you another."
At home, we found my father perusing the job averts in the Evening Post.
"There's plenty of time for that," I said.
"I wasn't looking for you," he snapped. "This is research - counting how many manufacturing jobs there are as opposed to the service sector,… . how many full time proper jobs, how many short contract, part time sweat shop jobs."
"And? "
"You don't want to know," he said. "Not in your predicament."
"I could always retrain, and get a job at the burger-bar in the precinct."
"You're too old," he sniped. "By about a quarter of a century."
"Thanks for those words of comfort, Dad."
Eleanor leaned over and kissed the top of his head. "Come on you two,… honestly. It's like I've got two kids sometimes."
In the days that followed, it seemed as if I was shrinking back into my boyhood, lounging on the bed in the evenings, in my old room,… reading, thinking, waiting,… . waiting for Derby's to close and for the next stage in my divorce.
The room had been a bit of a dump when I'd first arrived,… a convenient place for hiding junk, but that had been taken in hand now and each night, when I returned from work it was to find some new improvement - the curtains washed and pressed, clean sheets on the bed, and a new duvet cover.
The carpet always seemed freshly hoovered, and my clothes from the night before had always been gathered up by Eleanor's unseen hand, and spirited away,… fresh clothes appearing washed and ironed in the drawers. Then, one evening, I came home to find she'd dug out an old picture frame and made a mount for it out of cardboard. She'd decorated it with coloured pencil, an intricate pattern of romantic figures, dark robed and pouting - very Pre-Raphaelite - and she'd stuck a copy of Rachel's photograph in the frame before setting it on my bedside.
My short-wave radio appeared from somewhere as well. I think my father must have fished it out of the shed and Eleanor had polished it with Mr Sheen. It was thirty years old, the most advanced component in it being a transistor and it crackled nostalgically as I spun the dials in search of English speaking stations. I kept the radio on the bedside table along with the photograph and the sketch book Eleanor had bought me.
It was a beautifully bound book, the hard covers being decorated with a dense Paisley pattern. Once or twice I'd opened it with the intention of beginning a drawi
ng, but after an age of staring at the blank page, my motivation always fled, leaving me afraid to make the first mark, afraid to expose my total inadequacy.
Suddenly my awareness of the past was so great, I half expected to get up in the mornings and have to wheel my bike out of the shed, ready for the twenty minute ride to County High. And over the coming weeks, memories began pouring into my brain, as if someone had punched holes in time,… events, feelings, the smell of dusty corridors,… the feel of wet trousers on rainy school mornings. It made me wonder what it had all been for - all that hope, all that time spent working for something, something to lead me away from this room, and now, at forty two, I was right back where I had started from. But of course, it wasn't quite the same, and the difference was Eleanor.
Eleanor and my father were cosy together, like an old married couple, or like brother and sister - she being by far the older and more sensible of the two. She would sit in at nights with her music and her meditation, while he tapped away at his computer, and sometimes they'd be together on the sofa watching a movie - Eleanor curled into him, his arm around her shoulders, hugging her to him. They were easy,… contented, either apart or together - but there were twin beds in their room and my father had been impotent for twenty years. It was the eighties strike that had finished him, ending his life underground a broken man, his mind shattered, not by facing down the daily fear of a roof fall or a methane explosion, but by the strange little click every time he picked up the telephone to call a union meeting.
"Too bloody right I took the money," he said.
And into this cosiness, I began to unwind, becoming careless of my manners with Eleanor, as if she really were my mother, or my sister. But it pulled me up sharp one morning when, bleary eyed, I walked into the bathroom wearing nothing but my shorts, to see her stepping out of the shower. She gave a little gasp and I spun round quickly, averting my eyes.
But it's amazing how much the eye can capture in an instant. She had a very potent figure, long and curvy with a pale skin. And there were generous breasts whose dark tips almost matched the colour of her hair. She hadn't made to cover herself right away. She'd just smiled as if to say 'oops' and then I think she'd become aware of where my eyes had strayed. Her hand moved down then, protectively but it was too late; I had already seen the crescent shaped scar - a thin line, whiter even than the white of her skin. Annie had a similar one, so I knew exactly what it was - a caesarean scar.
The Road From Langholm Avenue Page 5