by Marie Joseph
‘She wants you to lift her out.’ Patty’s voice was matter-of-fact. ‘She loves people coming in. She’ll go to anybody. It’s a pity she can’t run about, but she can shuffle about on her behind quicker than what some kids can walk. Go on, take her out.’
Carefully Emma lifted the child from the chair and sat down with her on the settee. And at once two thin arms crept round her neck and the grotesque head was snuggled into her shoulder as the child smiled a wide smile of pure affection.
Immediately Emma’s pent-up anger evaporated as she rocked the small body to and fro. ‘Is there … is there nothing …?’ She faltered, stroking the fine soft hair away from the bulbous forehead.
‘Nothing.’ Patty shook her head from side to side. ‘They told me she wouldn’t live more than three years but she’s four now, and she can feed herself and say a few words.’ She raised her voice. ‘Say hello to Emma, chuck. Come on. Don’t let me down.’
The unblinking stare focused on Emma’s face. ‘Hello!’ she said clearly, then again, ‘Hello!’
‘She’s going to miss her Uncle Ben, that’s for sure.’ Patty sat down in the rocking chair pulled up to the flickering gas fire. ‘But he’ll be back. I know my brother. This isn’t the first time he did a bunk when things got too hot for him, but he’ll be back.’ She blinked. ‘An’ before you say anything, I know what I know, and you know what you think you know, but least said soonest mended. Okay?’
When Emma made no reply to this, she went on. ‘He cleared off this morning, but he’s been working up to it ever since he got the sack. He had a bag already packed, and when he walked out of that door, she knew.’ She pointed to the child. ‘Cried for half an hour as if her heart would break, so she’s got feelings same as you and me. She worshipped Ben, really loved him. Do you know something? She seemed to guess when it was time for him to come home from work, because she would crawl on her behind down the passage and wait behind the door, just like a faithful dog waiting for its master. So he can’t be all bad. He’s not all bad.’ Her chin came up in a gesture of defiance. ‘An’ you must have seen the good in him or you wouldn’t have been going out with him for so long. Why I’ve known him give his last penny if he thought one of his friends needed help; and yet the very same week he would leave me short and laugh in me face when I tried to tell him off.’
‘I’ve just been to see Mr Simon – Mr Martin.’ Emma looked at Patty over the head of the child sleeping now in her arms. ‘He was mugged last night, but then I don’t expect you know anything about that?’
Patty’s face wore a stretched look as if she were about to weigh every word she said. ‘No, I didn’t know. Is he hurt bad?’
‘Bad enough.’ Emma reached out a hand for a shawl hanging over the back of the settee and draped it round the bare shrunken legs of the child. ‘The doctor said he could have lost the sight of an eye, but there’s nothing wrong that can’t be put right, thank God.’
‘Aye, thank God. He’s a nice man. He comes down every night to the bar and always stops for a chat with me. Who would do such a dreadful thing?’
‘Yes, who, Patty?’ Emma tightened her hold on the warm soft little body nestling close. It put her at a disadvantage having the child on her knee. She was sorry for Patty. In a way she supposed she had always been sorry for her. From what Ben had told her the man Patty was living with wasn’t up to much, and the man who had fathered this child had disappeared as soon as he had known Patty was pregnant. And this room…. Emma’s quick glance, her way of observing detail, had showed her right away that Patty was no great shakes as a housewife. There was a shabby neglect about it that went further than mere dust on the furniture and stains on the carpet. There was a bareness, as though pieces of furniture had been sold, leaving only the essentials. The curtains were skimped of material, and the television table had a wad of newspaper jammed under one leg to keep it even.
‘Who do you think would wait for Mr Simon outside the hotel and beat him up?’ She kept her voice low. ‘Because somebody did wait for him, Patty. There aren’t many people round that area at that time of night, so I reckon it was somebody who was biding his time. Somebody who bore Mr Simon a grudge. Wouldn’t you say?’
Emma was prepared for Patty to look dismayed, even prepared for her to come out with some sort of confession of what she knew, but what she wasn’t prepared for was the way Patty jumped up from the chair, pushing it back so that it rocked violently.
‘Don’t ask me!’ she shouted. ‘Don’t drag me into it! I’ve had enough. I’ve had it right up to here!’ She slapped the underside of her chin with the flat of a hand. ‘Ben’s gone, and him I live with says he is going too, and what do you think’s going to happen to me then?’ Her hair was coming down, but she made no attempt to pin it back. ‘Look at me, Emma Sparrow! Just take a good look! Do you know how old I am? I’m twenty-four. Twenty-bloody-four, and I could be taken for ten years older any day. An’ you know why? Because I always pick the wrong bloody man, that’s why! I’ve lived with two wrong ones already, and I even picked the wrong brother. I nearly brought our Ben up on me own, did you know that? Mam picked the wrong man too. He knocked her about, just as I’ve been knocked about.’ She rolled up the sleeve of her blouse. ‘Look at this! An’ if Tracy hadn’t been downstairs this morning Ben would have given me a beating as a parting present.’ Her blue eyes went blank for a moment, then she seemed to be making up her mind about something. ‘It was partly my fault why Ben got the push, but there’s no need to look at me like that because I’m not going to go into no detail.’ She fastened the cuff of the shiny daisy-patterned yellow blouse. ‘He’s been hitting me on and off ever since it happened, an’ in a way I can’t blame him. But I’m telling you nothing! An’ if the police come here then I won’t be telling them nothing either.’
The front door opened and closed with a slam and immediately Patty snatched the sleeping child away from Emma, holding her roughly. Like a shield, Emma realized with horror.
‘It’s him,’ she whispered fiercely. ‘You’d best go. He’s taking it out on me because I have to go out at night while he stops in with Tracy. She buried her face in the child’s soft brown hair. ‘A fella can only be noble for so long, I’ve discovered. They soon revert to type, the sods.’
And there hadn’t really been anything she could do about it, Emma told herself as she made herself scarce. But, oh, dear God, that man! He looked what he was. Evil, loud-mouthed and furtively uncouth, and yet … even as Emma had mumbled something and turned to go, the child had raised its large head from Patty’s shoulder and smiled at him, a touching and open welcome to the man who stood swaying in the doorway, his eyes burning with resentment.
For the first time Emma became conscious of the fact that she had eaten nothing all day. She had rushed here, there and everywhere, and for what? Nothing had been achieved, nothing proved.
‘Leave it be, Emma Sparrow,’ she muttered to herself. ‘Stop trying to act God, as Ben and your dad were always telling you. Get on with your own life, such as it is.’
She quickened her steps, making for Litchfield Avenue, forcing herself to dwell, not on Mr Simon’s white face on the pillow, but on the domestic trivia she knew would be waiting for her the minute she opened the front door. Knowing that however troublesome that might be, nothing could equate with the squalor of the scene she had just left behind her.
How sad it was, and how true, that other folk’s problems could sometimes make your own fade into insignificance, she told herself as she crossed the road, walking so quickly that her pony-tail danced and bobbed as if it were possessed of a life of its own.
When Chloe visited the infirmary the next day Simon was sitting up, propped into position with high-banked pillows, the bandage round his head replaced by a strip of plaster holding the eye pad in place.
‘They’ve told you there’s no permanent damage to the eye, honey?’ She reached for his hand and he gripped it with a convulsiveness that only betrayed his weakness.
‘Yes. I’ve been lucky.’ His voice was so low that she had to lean forward to catch the words.
‘Lucky? My God, Simon. That’s hardly the word I would use. You could have been blinded.’ She tweaked the corner of a pillow. ‘Anyway, honey, I’ve been to see the house you wrote about and described, and I don’t like it; so I’ve wheedled the agent into letting us have a rented flat till we find something better. The drapes and the furnishings aren’t exactly David Hickey, but they’ll do. Temporarily.’ She smiled her wide smile. ‘Okay, okay. I know I don’t let no grass grow once I’ve made my mind up. I’ve been on to my boss and given him a month’s notice, and though he did his nut there’s nothing he can do. There’s nobody indispensable. Not even me!’
Simon’s answering smile was infinitely weary. ‘Oh, Chloe … I thought you said … I thought you were determined….’
‘Sure I was determined. Just as I am now determined to come and keep an eye on you.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Anyway, my overlord was making objecting noises about me wanting to take time off to go over to the States to see my folks, so the crunch would have had to come. He was getting a mite too big for those boots of his. He was treating me like a wife, for heaven’s sake!’
Simon closed his good eye. It was good to see Chloe sitting there, and yet there was something he couldn’t quite fathom. He could have sworn that last night – was it last night? – when he had opened his eyes it had been to see the girl Emma Sparrow sitting there with an expression of such caring on her face that immediately he had slipped back into a deeper sleep again.
‘There was a girl here when I came last night,’ Chloe was saying, as if reading his thoughts. ‘Emma Sparrow, she said her name was. What is she? The works’ shop steward or something?’
‘She is the girlfriend of a man I sacked on the spot a few weeks ago.’ Simon spoke without thinking, then bit his lip as the memory of the violence of the attack swept over him. He could still feel the heavy blows to his legs and the final terrifying kicks to his head as he lay helpless on the ground. Instinctively one hand went to his forehead. He had no proof. It had been too dark to see, and he had said that to the policeman who had come and stood by his bedside early that morning.
‘Then he was the one who did it!’ Chloe’s mind had always worked like quicksilver; he should have remembered that. ‘And she knows he did it. That is why she was here. To try and make you promise to say nothing.’ Chloe’s voice, never low at the best of times, rose so that the man in the next bed put down the paperback he was reading and stared at them with curiosity. ‘Simon! You must tell the police so they can pick him up right away.’ She glanced round the ward as if expecting to see a detective waiting in the corner. ‘Good God, honey, you’re not covering up for him, are you?’
‘I don’t know that it was Ben Bamford.’ He paused, giving Chloe time to file the name away in her mind for future reference. ‘I saw nothing. They came at me from behind.’ He frowned. ‘There was more than one, I am certain of that.’ He flexed his fingers. ‘One I could have managed, but I am certain that one held me down while the other put the boot in.’ He smiled with a touch of his usual dry humour. ‘That’s a cliché that is really true, love. I would say they were hobnailed boots with studs in, at a rough guess.’
‘And you told the police about sacking the man recently?’
Simon leaned his head back against the pillow and winced, though he really did feel much better. In fact he was going to get out of here as quick as he could, within the next few days at least. But Chloe was draining him. She was making him think before he was ready to think. It was a running battle for superiority between him and Chloe, and always had been, but she wasn’t going to beat him. Not even this time when all he wanted to do was to shut his good eye and go back to sleep again.
‘I am not going to tell the police about sacking the man,’ he said slowly. ‘It would lead to an assumption; an assumption that he tried to get his own back.’ He shifted his position slightly. ‘I was a stupid fool for going out walking at that time of night in a dark and deserted place. The police told me that there’s been an increase in crimes of violence lately in the town. There’s a lot of unemployment round here, and when men can’t find a job they sometimes react unpredictably.’
‘But there was no money taken!’ Chloe was indignant. ‘You told me that when you telephoned me in your half-conscious state. So how could the motive have been robbery?’
‘There was nothing taken because I didn’t have any money on me.’ Beads of sweat were beginning to form on Simon’s forehead. He was on the defensive without quite knowing why. ‘I had slipped out for a walk, Chloe. A walk. Like I do at home.’ He tried to smile, and at last she saw the strain he was under. ‘I’ve missed my nightly runs since I came up here. If a bloke goes out for a walk here he’s usually taking the shortest cut to the pub. Now, can we leave it?’
But Chloe never had been able to leave a question unanswered. ‘Then what was the Sparrow girl doing here?’
Her tone was all sweet reasonableness, but Simon was too weak to shout, too weary to launch himself into one of their arguments. He opted out by closing his eyes and clamping his mouth tight shut.
Chloe stood up, gathering silk scarf and purse together. ‘Okay, honey. I’ll come back this evening, then tomorrow I just have to drive back. But I’ve left the keys of the flat in your room. You can move in as soon as you feel well enough. I’ll drive up in a couple of weeks at the weekend.’ She leaned forward and kissed his unresponsive lips. ‘I will be working like stink to sort things out at the office before I leave, and there’s a trip to Copenhagen I must fit in somehow.’ Simon heard her low chuckle. ‘My replacement will wonder what’s hit her, or him, when she or he takes over. That’s for sure.’
He heard her quick footsteps go down the ward, then when he was sure she had gone he opened his eyes, pushed the cage over his legs to one side and painfully and slowly lowered his feet to the floor, wincing as his damaged right knee took his weight.
‘Sister will murder you if she catches you doing that,’ the man in the next bed warned, but sweating from every pore Simon pulled herself upright.
‘Sod Sister,’ the man thought he said; then he returned to his book, it being none of his business anyway.
When Simon appeared at the factory at the beginning of the next week, deathly pale and limping, with a strip of plaster over one eyebrow, the machinists followed his unsteady progress round the factory floor with eyes shining with admiration and awe. His courage brought out the mother instinct in them, and even the dour Mrs Arkwright fluttered round him, slipping down to the canteen for cups of tea laced with the sugar he did not take, and chocolate biscuits which melted in the saucer on the way up in the lift.
Simon waited for an opportunity to speak to Emma, and took his chance when he saw her sitting alone in the canteen.
‘I would like to thank you for coming to see me in hospital,’ he said, taking the chair opposite her and carefully stretching out his right leg to the side. ‘I very much appreciate that.’
Emma blushed. She had taken the train to Manchester to visit her father in Strangeways gaol at the weekend, and was still bowed down with the memory of the small man in prison grey who had shuffled towards her. Weeks of prison life had aged John Sparrow so that the deep lines on his thin face seemed to have been scored with a chisel. He had grumbled in a low monotone about the food, the total lack of privacy, the habits of his cell mate, staring with red-rimmed eyes anywhere but at his daughter’s face, so that when the time was up Emma had felt that she had been used merely as a sounding board.
‘He is totally institutionalized,’ she told Sharon back at Litchfield Avenue. ‘He asked about you and the boys, oh, sure he did that, but he wasn’t listening to what I told him. He is turned right in on himself.’
‘He always was,’ Sharon had said, her expression so much like her father’s that Emma had been forced to smile. ‘Me and Dad are selfish buggers, and the so
oner you accept that the better.’
Simon glanced round the canteen, then back at the silent girl opposite to him.
‘Have you seen Ben Bamford lately?’ he asked straight out, throwing Emma into such confusion that she stopped playing with her spoon and let it drop with a clatter back into her saucer.
‘No. No, I haven’t seen him, sir.’ Her voice was low and controlled, but Simon sensed her agitation.
‘Gone away, has he?’
Emma nodded so that her hair fell forward almost concealing her face. ‘I went to see his sister, where he lived, and she said he had gone. She didn’t know where. Sir,’ she added, as an afterthought.
It was the softly spoken ‘Sir’ that did it; that and the grinding pain of Simon’s damaged knee-cap. He jerked his head up and stared angrily at the girl across the table. He would have sworn that this girl was different. He would have sworn that her natural intelligence overrode any hang-ups about management and staff, but now … well, he wasn’t sure. His knee wasn’t getting any better, and he hated the flat Chloe had picked out for him. It was too filled with the clutter of the unknown person who had chosen the décor. He hated every square inch of the patterned wallpaper, fighting for precedence over the patterned carpet. He should have stayed at the hotel for a while longer, hell, he should have stayed in hospital longer, but there was so much to do – two jobs to commute between now that the mail order firm was playing ball. It was going to be as his father had predicted it would be–hard work finding the time to eat and sleep.
‘Do you think Ben Bamford did this?’
He had not meant to be so blunt, but as he saw Emma’s expression change he knew he was right.
‘That is why he has cleared off, isn’t it?’ he persisted.
Emma closed her eyes for a moment, seeing in her imagination Ben hammering the strange boy’s head into the floorboards at the disco, and seeing too the squalor of his barren home, with Patty cowed and beaten, holding the mentally retarded child in front of her as the man she lived with swayed unshaven and threatening in the doorway.