Today, Lucy was preparing a feast for her prodigal daughter. She chuckled. There was nothing of the prodigal about Elizabeth, but her temporary return to the fold after an absence of weeks was certainly worth celebrating. It was a cooler day, so roast beef with Yorkshires was on the menu. Lucy’s Yorkshires were reputedly so light that they needed weighing down with gravy to stop them floating up to the ceiling. Yes, it was lovely to be appreciated.
She sat down at the kitchen table for a few minutes. Not once had Alan complimented her on her culinary ability. If he survived, she would have to bring him here. She couldn’t allow him a room at Tallows, not if it was going to be used for sick children. Apart from anything else, he wasn’t safe when in drink. And she wanted him away from the place of her children’s birth, away from all previous contacts. The man should disappear, yet she could not find it in herself to wish him dead.
Lucy closed her eyes for a few moments and pictured a long-ago scene. Ma and Pa stood over her. They didn’t raise their voices, because that would have been ill-mannered to the point of indecency. They gave her all the reasons why she should not marry Alan Henshaw. He had not been educated. He was of poor stock, from a family who weren’t well nourished, and she should be seeking to make a better match from within their circle. Any children would be affected by their father’s paucity of learning. The man was a money-grabber, and she would suffer. He would ruin her, and she should heed their words.
Her eyes opened. How right they had been. Yet they had allowed her to marry, had given her a good wedding and a house in which she could live with her inappropriate husband. After their deaths, Lucy had inherited Tallows and a great deal of money. ‘How on earth did I manage to believe that I loved him?’ she asked the cruet set. ‘Because he took my virginity? Anyone might think I’d been born in the wrong century. Why did I do it? Was I afraid of being left on the pantry shelf?’
No answer came from salt, pepper and French mustard, but at that moment Liz burst into the room. She flung her arms round her mother. ‘You look wonderful! Sorry I’ve taken so long to get here, but we’ve been working some Sundays as well. And I am having the best time, playing a fourteen-year-old prostitute on heroin. What have you done to yourself? Isn’t this house just great? And the river, too. Do you like it here? What’s the news?’ She released Lucy and started to examine the kitchen, the garden, the road.
Lucy watched the whirlwind she had birthed twenty years ago. Elizabeth was magnificent. Like her mother, she would never be a coat hanger, because she was shaped like a real woman. This precious girl was possessed of a very infectious joy, a need to know, a thirst for life. She was so similar to the girl who would have been her aunt … Diane. Oh, Diane. ‘Have you visited your father yet, Lizzie?’
‘No. They didn’t allow visitors for the first few weeks, and I really have been tied up with the theatre thing. Sorry.’
‘It’s all right. You have to live your life, sweetheart.’
‘Where are my brothers?’
‘They’re with the girls next door.’
Liz stopped mid-stride. ‘Paul told me about that thing with the man. Are you OK? No wonder people are falling in love with you – you look about thirty. You’re an absolute stunner, Mother.’
Lucy grinned. ‘He isn’t people. He’s just a sex-starved GP with a sick wife, and because she’s unable to give him the closeness he needs she was interviewing me for the post. I hope we’ve engineered a stop to that. But the twins and her daughters have managed to put it all behind them. They’re nice girls, both studying to be doctors. Their brother’s a doctor already.’
‘Very grand.’ Liz flopped into an armchair.
‘Your dad has his heart op tomorrow, dear. He’s signed the consent form – Mr Evans-Jones phoned earlier to tell me. Once he’s in surgical recovery you’ll be able to see him.’
Liz sat upright suddenly. She didn’t like thinking about Daddy. Theatre in the Park had occupied her to the point where she’d managed not to consider him too frequently, but here, with her family in an unfamiliar setting, she realized how drastically life had changed. ‘Not sure I’ll want to,’ she said.
‘You love your father, Lizzie. Love doesn’t stop because he’s done something wrong. He’s still Daddy. A child’s love for a parent lasts for ever. And vice versa.’
‘And a wife’s love for a husband?’
‘Is not the same. It’s not unconditional – the divorce statistics confirm that. Now. Go next door and introduce yourself while I set the table.’
Liz stayed where she was. The world was changing, but it surely hadn’t descended to the point where wives sought partners for their own husbands?
‘You’ll understand when you see Moira, Lizzie.’
‘Do you read minds, Mother?’
‘Of course I do. All mothers do – it comes with the job. Just wait till you have three children very close in age, miles apart in needs. I had a daughter who played at killing people with a poker. She used my dustbin lid as a shield, and she wouldn’t wear dresses except for school. My sons were always studying something or other. They were hopeless at sports, brilliant at school. So, as a mother, you read minds and provide accordingly.’
‘Right. So you want me to go and meet a woman who wanted you to deliver for her husband.’
Lucy smiled. ‘Look, sweet child. Moira can hardly breathe some days. Her food is almost pureed, and she can’t walk more than a few steps. Yet all she thinks about is the man she loves. She wanted a lot more from me – she was planning to leave him to me in her will. A second husband for me, a second wife for him.’
‘So it wasn’t as disgusting as it sounded?’
‘No. I just had to make sure it stopped. Moira was playing a dangerous game, so we built a big firewall. I mean it, Lizzie – you will love her. She’s an endangered species – a true eccentric rather than a manufactured one. You’ll meet many would-be oddities in your game, but this lady’s for real. Go on – shoo.’
When Liz had left, Lucy began to contend with another of her specialities – a real sauce anglaise. No yellow powder from a packet for her – she was a true chef, though she tended to concentrate on English food. Perhaps she would go to night school, do a bit of Italian and French stuff? It was a thought.
She worked for about ten minutes, then Paul and Mike came in. ‘Mums, you’ll never guess,’ said the latter.
‘No, I won’t. Not without a clue, anyway. Go away while I thicken this sauce.’
But they weren’t going anywhere. ‘It happened. Just like that.’ Paul clicked his fingers. ‘I didn’t believe in it. Did you?’ he asked his brother.
‘No. Never. Not until today, anyway.’
Lucy wiped her forehead. ‘What?’
‘Oh, so you’re interested now, eh?’ Paul sat in a carver. ‘Head over heels,’ he said. ‘Hook, line, sinker, keep net and every fly in the box. Their eyes met across a crowded room—’
‘Birds sang,’ added Mike.
‘—and she blushed,’ Paul concluded, triumph in his tone.
Lucy gave up. ‘If this custard’s lumpy, I shall blame you pair. Start again. Paul, you’re too mischievous. Mike? Come on, out with it.’
‘It was like Brief Encounter,’ the quieter twin said. ‘Beautiful. But without the ashtrays and the teacups. Oh, and the trains.’
‘Or Gone With the Wind.’
Lucy glared at Paul. ‘I know you’re a few minutes older than Mike, but shut up.’ She turned to her other son. ‘You can forget the weepy films, just tell me what happened.’
‘Our little Lizzie walked in next door, introduced herself to Moira, and after a few minutes—’
‘About five minutes,’ Paul interjected.
She waved her wooden spoon at him. ‘One more word from you, me lad, and you’ll be wearing this through your nose.’
‘Well, Simon walked in. He was doing all right till he fell over a chair. Staring at your daughter, Mrs Henshaw. And she was staring at him. It was electric, wa
sn’t it, Paul?’
But Paul was standing like a first-year infant school child, a finger to his lips.
‘They’re in next door’s garden now. Come on, Mums,’ Mike begged. ‘We know where the spy holes are.’ He dragged his mother into the garden. Somewhere, she had a carton of Sainsbury’s ready-made custard, just for emergencies. This was probably an emergency.
The three of them stood in a row, eyes pinned to knotholes in the fence. Lucy couldn’t help smiling. Her daughter and Simon Turner were seated on a padded swing with a canopy. There was space between them, but it was decreasing as she watched. A centimetre at a time, they edged closer to each other.
What the hell was she doing? She pulled her twins away from the fence. ‘Inside – now,’ she whispered.
‘What?’ shouted Paul.
She pushed him towards the house while Mike followed. When the door was closed, she rounded on them. ‘Why did I allow that?’ she asked. ‘That’s not who I am any more. I don’t do as I’m told.’
Mike agreed, and he said so. ‘But what did you think, Mums?’
‘Interesting,’ she replied. ‘But I shan’t buy a wedding hat just yet.’
Apart from a few rather explosive laughs from the boys, lunch proceeded in an orderly fashion until the first course was over. When Liz stood up to start clearing plates, Lucy asked her to sit down again. ‘About Tallows,’ she said. ‘I’ll come to the point right away. Someone wants to borrow it for a while. In fact, I offered, albeit provisionally, to lend it until I die, at which time the property will revert to the three of you, so I need your agreement.’
She told them about Diane and the Notorious Five, about the boy who had lived at the end of the lane, about his disappearance. ‘I went to see your dad in Bolton hospital,’ she explained. ‘And David was there. Yes, yet another doctor – I seem unable to escape them. It all appeared to fit, because I don’t want to leave Tallows empty, and I know my sister would have approved.’
They listened intently while she outlined the adult life of the friend she had mislaid over thirty years ago. ‘So it’s for the families,’ she concluded. ‘They need a break from time to time, a rest and a change of scenery.’
Liz dabbed her eyes with a corner of her napkin. ‘Then we do it,’ she announced. ‘Boys?’
They both nodded.
‘Thank you,’ said Lucy. ‘Now, you must change your permanent address to here – driving licences, college registration, banks and so forth. Your stuff will have to be taken out of Tallows, though I hope you’ll allow me to leave all toys for the children. My contribution will be that I shall charge no rent. Bills and running costs will be paid by the Timothy Vincent Trust.’
‘I took Dobbin and the dolls’ house to the safe place.’ Liz smiled through her tears. ‘We can get them back. I just thought they were valuable, Mother. But they should be enjoyed. Children are worth more than possessions.’
‘And you three are pearls. Some of the furniture can come here, because it will fit in very well,’ Lucy said. ‘The rest I shall auction in London – get the better prices. And David will be here this evening.’
Paul spoke in a stage whisper. ‘Is she blushing?’
‘I am not blushing.’
Liz laughed. ‘The lady doth protest too much, methinks.’
The twins rounded on their sister. ‘Oh, yes? What about you and the fellow next door? You were practically sharing the same shirt on that swing. He fell for you, all right. Over a chair and his mother’s walking frame.’
Mike chipped in. ‘Reminded us of Brief Encounter. It could have been brief – he might have suffered concussion.’
‘Leave her alone,’ Lucy ordered.
‘Mums, you’re as bad. You went all glassy-eyed whenever you said David’s name. And you’re not even divorced yet.’ Paul folded his arms. ‘This is going to become very illuminating, Mike. It seems we have a wayward sister and a delinquent mother.’
‘On top of all of which, you also have Sainsbury’s custard. You can thank your brothers for that, Elizabeth.’ Lucy left the table. She stood in the kitchen for a while, just listening as they quarrelled good-heartedly. ‘I am a fortunate woman,’ she told herself. ‘Except, that is, for the ready-made custard.’
The afternoon was supposed to be quiet, but it didn’t work out that way. For a start, there was Liz’s phone. It rang every few minutes and, in the end, Liz left the scene and sat in the garden. Simon Turner had returned to work at the Royal, and Lucy worried about patients, since one of their doctors seemed to be permanently engaged, as was Liz’s phone. She watched while her daughter giggled and blushed like a teenager. ‘Love at first sight? I doubt it,’ she said to an empty room. But she had never before seen her daughter in such a flap. She was like a thirteen-year-old with a crush on the head boy.
The twins had gone out to see something or other in Matthew Street, and both Turner girls had accompanied them. It wasn’t time to prepare for the arrival of David, so Lucy settled down with a book. But this was destined to be a rather less than peaceful Sabbath, as she found when she answered the front door bell. She didn’t get the chance to say anything, because one of the women who stood there filled the silence and the doorway immediately. She was roughly the same size as Shirley Bishop, but she was noisier.
‘I know it said Wednesday. But we can’t do Wednesday this week because of her and the wisdom teeth.’ Next to her, the short, thin owner of said wisdom teeth looked very miserable. ‘So that’s why we’ve come today, cos we wanted to be first. I said to Dee – didn’t I, Dee? – that we couldn’t miss the chance.’
It had been explained to Lucy that although she was doing quite well when it came to the interpretation of the local lingo, she would eventually meet people who spoke Dinglish. They hailed from a part of Liverpool labelled ‘the Dingle’, and had developed a language all their own. She guessed that the big woman wasn’t quite speaking Dinglish, because most of what she said was understandable.
‘Didn’t I say that, Dee?’
Dee nodded sombrely. ‘She did. She did say that, yes.’
The big woman carried on. ‘Mind, Sunday’s my lucky day, isn’t it, Dee?’
‘It is, yeah.’
Lucy wondered whether she might have fallen asleep during chapter five of her Thomas Hardy. Or had she slipped into some parallel universe where oddly shaped people with bad wisdom teeth knocked on doors on Sunday afternoons? ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed while the big woman drew breath. ‘Have you come to the right house?’
‘We would have come on Wednesday like it said on the thing in the shop window, only Dee—’
‘Yes, I got that bit. Please come in.’
When all three were seated, Lucy realized what was happening. ‘The advertisement for cleaners!’ she exclaimed.
The big woman looked at the lady of the house and shook her head as if in near-despair. ‘Who did you think we were, queen? Jehovah’s Witnesses? We’re domestic and commercial operatives, me and her. Professionals, like. Dee’s me daughter, and I’m Carol. We live together with her kids in my house down Stanley Road, but we can be here for breakfasts and then we can clean or whatever. Give us a try, love.’
Lucy cast her eyes over them. The big one looked as if she’d get out of breath if she made a bed, while the thinner woman was frail enough to be blown over in a light breeze. Perhaps if she rolled them together like a ball of Plasticine and cut them in half, they’d make two normal people? ‘So you’re experienced?’ she asked.
‘Very,’ said big Carol. ‘We’ve got references, and we’ll work a couple of days for no money, give you chance see what we’re like, like.’
‘Who looks after your children, Dee?’
‘Our Beryl,’ replied Carol, who seemed to be the spokesperson. ‘She can’t talk proper,’ she explained. ‘Our Dee, I mean. It’s her wisdom teeth.’
Lucy was trying hard not to laugh. ‘What about your husbands?’
Carol chewed her lip for a moment. ‘Dee’s was
a window cleaner what fell off his ladder and died.’
‘Oh, I am so sorry.’
‘It’s all right – he was useless. Wasn’t he, love?’
Dee inclined her head.
‘Mine went to the chip shop on Thursday and never came back.’
Lucy blinked a few times. ‘But that’s three days. Have you told the police?’
‘Thursday 1998,’ came the reply. It was accompanied by a broad smile.
This was too much for Lucy. She fled into her bathroom, opened the cabinet and, once she had calmed down, brought a small bottle into the sitting room. ‘Tooth tincture,’ she said as she passed it to Dee. ‘I don’t know how much use it will be for impacted wisdom teeth, but you can give it a try.’
‘Ta, queen.’
Liz came in. ‘Hello,’ she said.
Big Carol’s mouth made a circle before she spoke. ‘Ar, ay,’ she said. ‘You’re dead fit, you are, girl.’ The ‘girl’ arrived as ‘gairl’.
Fortunately, Liz seemed to know that ‘dead fit’ meant pretty. ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘I’m going out, Mother. I shan’t be too long, just popping into Liverpool to have a look round.’
‘To the Royal, I take it?’
Liz blushed. ‘He’s on a split shift.’
‘My husband done them splits,’ Carol announced. ‘Till he realized he’d had his chips.’
Lucy grinned. Chips. Thursday. 1998.
‘Only with him, it wasn’t work,’ Carol continued. ‘Against his religion, work. It was women. There was me, his wedded wife, like. Then there was a fork-lift truck driver from Speke, a girl from Formby what did people’s hair in their own houses, and Barbie Bow-legs from next door.’
She turned to Lucy. ‘Barbie knew I was going to kill her, like, so she buggered off to buy chips as well. Never seen her since. She’s one you could recognize a mile off, because her legs have different postcodes. If she played football, she’d be useless in goal.’
Lucy howled with laughter. She curled in a ball on the seat of her large armchair, arms hugging her body against the pain. She would have to see other candidates on the stated day, but these two were a female Laurel and Hardy – the entertainment value was beyond price. She looked up and saw her daughter in hysterics, tears pouring down her face.
The Liverpool Trilogy Page 10