The Past and Other Lies

by Maggie Joel

  ‘Bloody ’ell! There’s someone there!’

  ‘What? Oh, I doubt it...’

  ‘I tell you, there was someone there, in the doorway.’

  ‘Ghosts. Must be a ghost. In this house.’

  And it was only moments later, as she was running across the road and stumbling back through the front door at number fifteen, after the initial shock and revulsion had gone, that Deirdre realised that Caroline had seen her, that their eyes had met in the yellow moonlight, that it was Caroline who had said, her voice so quiet, so detached: ‘Ghosts. Must be a ghost. In this house.’

  She had told Mum, of course.

  It wasn’t fair of Caroline to expect people to lie for her, especially when what she was doing was so...horrid! Besides, it was for Caroline’s own good. Imagine if people found out she had done something like that. With her own uncle! With a man that old, a widower! And they not even married or engaged or ever likely to be and Clive’s wife—not to mention poor, dear William—barely dead and in their graves. Really, Deirdre had had no choice. Anyone could see that. Caroline was allowed to get away with murder and Mum and Dad never said a thing, never stopped her. It had always been that way, right from when they were children. And it was worse now, with her working at the factory and smoking and coming and going whenever she pleased. Well, this was where it had led, and they would all have to stew in their own juices!

  Mum was standing in the hallway as Deirdre stumbled back inside the house.

  ‘Deirdre! What do you think you’re doing?’ Mum demanded, in that half-tentative, half-authoritative tone she had, and in that moment Deirdre despised her.

  ‘Out! I can go out if I want to. Caroline does!’

  Mum looked shocked.

  ‘You know you are not allowed out after blackout, it’s not safe. You know Dad particularly forbid it.’

  But Deirdre stood her ground. She had half a mind to say, See if I care, after what I’ve just seen! If you only knew, that would wipe the smile off your face! Instead she raised her chin defiantly and sniffed.

  This seemed to annoy Mum, who countered with: ‘You’d better have a jolly good reason for going out, my girl, or I’ll be forced to tell Dad.’

  ‘Tell him then! And I’ll tell him I was following Caroline. She left an hour early for work—again!—and she went into the Davenports’ house. And I was the only one who noticed. So I followed.’

  She hadn’t meant to say that but Mum had made her. Well, it was too bad. But nothing was going to make her divulge the rest of her dreadful secret.

  ‘Caroline?’ Mum replied, confused, suspicious, as if the idea of her eldest daughter doing anything untoward had simply never occurred to her. As if she suspected her errant younger daughter was making the whole thing up.

  Deirdre felt a rush of fury.

  ‘Yes, Caroline! And she wasn’t alone!’

  Oh that’s torn it.

  The blood rushed to her face. She hadn’t meant to say that. She wasn’t sure what she had intended to say, but it wasn’t that.

  Mum advanced on her, reaching for her arm angrily.

  ‘What do you mean? You ought not to say such horrid things about your sister.’

  ‘You mean, you don’t want to hear them!’ Deirdre retorted hotly, suddenly glad she’d said what she had. ‘Anyway it’s true and I don’t care if you believe me or not! They go there every night at six o’clock. Go and see for yourself if you don’t believe me. They’re in there right now! In the Davenports’ bedroom. There’s a way in round the back...through the kitchen window...’

  Mum’s fingers grasped her arm, squeezing painfully, pulling Deirdre to her, and she suddenly seemed to have become something else entirely, some other person, not Mum at all, and Deirdre felt a flicker of panic.

  ‘What do you mean they? Who? Who is it?’

  Deirdre’s eyes dropped from Mum’s face and she wished she could escape. She imagined herself pulling free and making a mad dash for her room. Instead she shrugged and muttered, ‘I didn’t see...’

  ‘You said you saw them, who was it?’

  ‘I didn’t see! Just two people. Caroline and...a man.’

  Mum let go of her arm with a little shake and stepped back, and when Deirdre looked up, Mum had a closed, almost disappointed look on her face.

  ‘I don’t believe you saw anything at all,’ she said quietly.

  ‘You’d believe it if it was about me, wouldn’t you?’ Deirdre countered furiously. ‘Anyway, I did see and it was Caroline, whether you believe me or not! And she was with Uncle Clive!’

  That was it. There was no going back. Mum had to believe her now, because who could make something like that up?

  ‘Go to your room, Deirdre.’

  She had expected anger. She had expected a slap on the cheek. But Mum’s voice was flat, quiet.

  ‘Go to your room and stay there and say nothing of this to anyone, do you understand?’

  Deirdre had nodded quickly. The only thing that mattered was escaping to her room and staying there.

  The following morning Caroline had come waltzing in from the nightshift as bold as brass. And Mum had said nothing, done nothing, only banged the frying pan around a lot. And now it was six o’clock and Caroline was over there doing it again in the Davenports’ bedroom.

  Ugh! Horrible, odious, insidious, disgusting Uncle Clive who always got ready to go out, so promptly, so punctually, at six o’clock. That awful eau-de-cologne, his shiny hair, that moustache, leaving the house just before Caroline did.

  And no one ever noticed!

  That slimy smile, the slow wink... She’d always assumed that horrid wink was for her! Ugh! And it had never occurred to her—never in a million years—that Caroline was going to meet him. That Caroline was doing it—

  Poor William! And Mum had done nothing!

  And at one minute past six the rocket had landed.

  One moment Deirdre was in her room staring at a blank school exercise book. The next she was lying on her back staring at the ceiling with all the wind knocked out of her, fighting to catch her breath.

  And somehow, seconds or minutes or hours later, she was in her parents’ room—how had she got here?—where, until a minute ago, a window had been. Now the window was a thousand shattered pieces all over the carpet and bedspread and crunching beneath her slippers.

  ‘There! There! In the house! She’s in the house!’ Deirdre screamed, pointing through the window frame though there was no one to see her point.

  As she pointed, her voice seemed to have dried up, to have evaporated, and she was aware of a great ball of fire at the far end of the street, on the corner of Nelson Avenue.

  It had to be a rocket.

  But she hadn’t heard it! She hadn’t heard a thing. It had just dropped, it had just exploded—there was no warning! No warning at all! How were you supposed to know? How could you prepare when there was no warning?

  And Caroline was there. Caroline was in number twenty-eight. She was there with Uncle Clive and now there was no number twenty-eight.

  Deirdre gripped the window frame to stop the room spinning off and herself crashing to the floor. Then she let go and stared at the palms of her hands which were laced with little flecks of blood from the broken glass.

  Already she could see people running, someone was screaming, men’s voices shouted, ‘Stop, don’t go in! Don’t go in—it’s not safe!’ The Davies lived at that end of Oakton Way, Mrs Forster and Jack Forster and—

  She stopped herself. But no one knew Caroline was in number twenty-eight. No one but her. And Clive, of course. Clive, who was in there. Meeting her.

  And if Clive had been here in this very room with her now, she would have launched herself at him and punched his face and gouged out his eyes for making Caroline meet him in that house.

  She turned and ran out of the room, stumbling in the dark, tripping and flinging out both hands to steady herself, then launching herself down the stairs.

  She fell in a
heap at the bottom of the stairs with a thud, twisting her ankle painfully, gasping, then, with a sob, she hauled herself up and hobbled towards the open front door. As she reached out for it, the wildly flickering lights from the fires outside danced and bounced off the hall walls like a giant Guy Fawkes bonfire.

  The activity at the end of the street had intensified and Deirdre stood in the doorway, her hand shielding her eyes from the heat and the light and the smoke. She had to watch; her eyes were drawn to the roaring, crackling, leaping flames, to the misshapen black forms of the destroyed houses and the tiny running silhouettes of the fire crews as they struggled with hoses.

  But that wasn’t her concern. There were no flames from number twenty-eight, she could see that. But the bizarrely altered shape of the roof and the first floor made her heart lurch. Where was Dad? And Mum? Why weren’t they here? No one knew!

  ‘Help! Help me! Over here!’ she cried, calling to the fire crew as she hobbled out into the street, waving wildly. But no one heard her, no one could hear a thing over the roar of the flames, the klaxon of the fire tenders.

  She was alone in a world that had burst into flames.

  She reached the Davenports’ house and stumbled over piles of rubble. It was dark now, away from the flames, too dark to make out clearly what lay in front of her. She tripped and flung out both hands as she fell again then lay, stunned and grazed.

  A figure appeared, looming over her, a dark shape, gasping and stumbling. Emerging from the side passage!

  Deirdre gasped.

  ‘Caroline?’ she cried out as the figure stumbled straight into her then fell backwards against a wall.

  ‘Move!’ It was a man’s voice. ‘Gawd’s sake, move out the way! It’s all gonna come down!’

  Clive!

  ‘But where is she? Where’s Caroline?’

  Clive simply pushed past her and Deirdre stood frozen in horror, because this was all wrong, you were supposed to help! And he had left. He had left Caroline in there!

  Was the house going to collapse? What should she do?

  She became aware of shouting. It was coming from behind, from the street, and, turning, she could make out Clive calling and waving to the fire crew and in a moment men were running, pushing past her and, at last, no matter what happened, someone was helping.

  ‘Here, here!’ she pointed, waving frantically. ‘The side passage, there’s a window, the kitchen window. My sister, Caroline...’

  But by then the men—anonymous men with smoke-blackened faces—had disappeared down the passage and there was nothing she could do.

  The house was going to collapse. She dragged herself to her feet and backed away down the path, wondering where Clive had gone, whether he had been one of the men who had gone back inside.

  She was distracted then by shouts from the front bedroom and as she looked up she saw light from a torch bouncing around the room, lighting up first the wall, then the collapsed roof, then the faces of the men. The shouts were momentarily drowned out by a great crunch then a rush of rubble followed by a silence.

  God, please let it be alright, please let it all be alright.

  She repeated it over and over again, unable to stop because if she stopped then something bad would happen. As long as she continued saying the words, there was a chance.

  She was still saying them under her breath when the men reappeared at the side passage, a stretcher carried awkwardly between them. Deirdre held her breath and waited till the stretcher was level with her and she could see that the occupant was alive and breathing and had a makeshift bandage across her forehead and was...Mum.

  Mum?

  And behind her was Dad, his face serious, and behind him was...Caroline. Pale, a streak of dirt across one cheek, but otherwise perfectly unharmed.

  Deirdre stood and gaped, shaking her head, trying to make sense of it. Mum had been there when the rocket fell? Mum had gone to meet Clive instead of Caroline?

  Her stomach plummeted through the floor. Of course she had. That was exactly what Mum would do—the only way, in fact, that Mum could deal with a situation like this. She would meet Clive, warn him off. Tell him she knew, give him a chance to explain—or to deny it. Tell him to go. Anything that meant not telling Dad. And Deirdre had supplied her with the information: every night at six o’clock. In the Davenports’ bedroom. There’s a way in round the back. Through the kitchen window.

  So Mum was here—had come here this evening—because she, Deirdre, had told her about Caroline and Clive. And if Mum had died...

  She felt her knees give way and she was violently sick. By the time she had got to her feet the stretcher had been carried down to a waiting ambulance and loaded on board. She could see Dad standing silently, watching, before climbing on board himself.

  It was her fault.

  No. No, that wasn’t true. She turned to face her sister, who until a moment ago had been all but dead.

  ‘What if she dies? What if Mum dies now?’ she screamed, launching herself at Caroline, when what she meant to say was, I thought you were dead.

  ‘It’s a knock on the head, just a knock,’ said Caroline, holding her off and staring after the ambulance. Or perhaps she was watching the flames.

  Deirdre felt sick again. She wanted to scream out, You killed her, you almost killed Mum! but instead she said, with a sob, ‘Where’s Clive? Is he here? He nearly died too!’ because she wanted Caroline to realise what might have happened, that this was all her fault.

  But Clive was nowhere to be seen and Caroline said nothing.

  The sob came again, shaking her whole body, and she couldn’t stop it, she couldn’t push it down.

  ‘Did Dad rescue her?’ she gasped, after a moment, after it became clear that Caroline wasn’t going to say anything. ‘Did he dig Mum out?’

  She needed to know what had happened.

  She couldn’t stop the sobs.

  ‘Yes, of course he did,’ said Caroline, turning to face her. ‘He wouldn’t just stand there and let her die, would he? What kind of man would do that?’

  Deirdre didn’t know what kind of man. Apart from Uncle Clive, who seemed to epitomise that kind of man. She began shivering again, suddenly realising how bitterly cold it was and that she wasn’t wearing a coat or anything.

  ‘Come on,’ said Caroline calmly, putting an arm around her shoulders and guiding her towards the house.

  The door stood wide open as they had left it. Deirdre reached the front step and stumbled through the doorway, breathing into her cut hands to get the circulation back, to try to stop the shivering.

  It was bitterly cold and she turned back to hurry Caroline inside so they could shut the front door.

  But Caroline had stopped and was standing there in the middle of Oakton Way just as though she couldn’t feel the cold, just as though nothing had happened at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘DID YOU CAME UP M1 and past Leeds, or A56 from Preston?’ asked Mr Milthorpe from the position he’d taken up just inside the doorway of Caroline’s hospital room.

  Deirdre ignored him—those were the sort of questions you had a husband for.

  ‘Leeds,’ said Eric, who was sitting beside her nursing a plastic coffee cup on his lap, turning eagerly to take up Mr Milthorpe’s line of questioning. ‘And Wetherby,’ he added.

  ‘Wetherby!’ said Mr Milthorpe, surprised.

  ‘Ml seemed the best route. Once you get past Leeds you’re okay. A56 might be less congested but it takes you too far west.’

  ‘Aye. Aye, that’s as may be. But it’s a gamble, either way,’ agreed Mr. Milthorpe thoughtfully, as though they were discussing some vital military strategy.

  Meanwhile, Caroline lay unconscious on the bed before them, hooked up to half a dozen bleeping, flickering, buzzing machines. It was a strange social occasion, where the person on whose behalf you were all gathered, family and strangers alike, wouldn’t—couldn’t—speak to you. Left you all to your own devices to make the best of it,
to find some topic of conversation, some part of your lives in common.

  Why didn’t the irritating man just leave?

  Deirdre turned to her husband. ‘Eric, why don’t you see if that doctor’s around?’

  ‘Oh, right-ho.’ Eric stood up and sauntered off in search of the doctor.

  Mr Milthorpe sat down in the vacated chair and fell silent.

  The doctor, Dr Ormerod, was a very young Asian woman who spoke with a strong Birmingham accent. She’d greeted them with a cheery ‘Alright?’ soon after they’d arrived and ushered them into a horrid little office ‘for a little chat, like’. The office had been so cluttered with metal filing cabinets and a desk piled high with manila folders stuffed to overflowing with papers that the three of them had barely been able to stand comfortably without touching some part of each other. As Eric was her husband and the doctor a stranger, albeit another woman, Deirdre had stood very close to Eric and had listened to the doctor’s solemn report on Caroline’s condition as the corner of a filing cabinet had dug into her lower back.

  Caroline had had an ischaemic stroke, which was, the doctor had explained pleasantly, a clot in an artery in the brain. They’d put her on thrombolytic drugs which would, they hoped, break up the blockage and reopen the artery.

  Eric had nodded and said, ‘Ah,’ and Deirdre had listened and felt a sort of rising panic because she didn’t know what it actually meant.

  Caroline’s condition, said the doctor, summing it all up for them, was critical but stable. Critical meant her life was in danger. Stable meant she hadn’t died yet. She had a fifty-fifty chance of survival, but an eighty-twenty chance of sustaining some permanent paralysis or other disability. There was a fifty-fifty probability that she would remain in a coma and not regain consciousness.

  The odds and percentages were hard to take in. Eric had said it was like going to Walthamstow dogs and trying to decide which greyhound to back. At least in a greyhound race there were usually only six to eight runners and you felt like the odds must be in your favour. They weren’t of course, because a one in eight chance is no chance at all, really.