She was touching him. She was looking at his scalp to see if there was blood. Oh, hell, she was kissing his injury better. And she was lifting his face, and he wondered whether she was going to kiss him properly on the lips.
‘You’re not bleeding,’ she informed him. ‘I think you’ll live.’ And he made ten of Tom Wotsisname. Bingley.
‘Good.’ This single syllable emerged from the throat of a fourteen-year-old whose voice still sought its true level. Well, that was progress, because he’d been an infant just moments earlier. Her face was so dangerously near. ‘I think I love you,’ he said. Had he said it or had he thought it? She was smiling. He had said it, and he was a clown.
‘I know you think you do,’ she replied. ‘And I think I may think the same given time. You’re the best idiot I’ve come across in a while. I collect idiots. My mother was my first.’
He blinked.
‘You know what I mean, Keith. We’re good friends, you and I. That’s the best basis for everything, isn’t it?’
He wasn’t sure about that. Both times, he had fallen without thinking, and friendship hadn’t figured largely in the recipe during the early days. He’d wanted Annie, and now he wanted this one. But it was more than the bed stuff; it was sitting together in the evenings, having a meal, going to the pub, visiting friends, laughing, drinking tea and cursing the government. And it was looking at her, just looking and enjoying what he saw, living with perfection even when it wasn’t perfect, when face cream covered skin, when hair was in curlers, when she was too tired to be pretty. So friendship was necessary, he supposed. ‘I don’t want to be just your friend,’ he said carefully.
‘What do you want, then?’
‘To be with you.’
‘That’s friendship. Sharing things, being in the same house, talking and laughing – that’s the cake before it gets iced. I worked out that people have to be joined at the head as well as by other parts. Laz was my best friend in the world. I missed me bezzie mate most of all, Keith. Fancying somebody isn’t enough.’
‘I know,’ he replied. ‘I was taking friendship for granted – it’s in the letters. I already know you and like you. From that, it was a small step.’
‘And you love me?’
He felt silly, stupid, inadequate. ‘It was the same twenty years ago,’ he said lamely. ‘Since then, there’s been nobody who mattered.’
This man would never hurt her. She would never fear turning away, because he wasn’t going to pounce, threaten, mither … Tom did all that. Sometimes, he drove past the house several times in a day, and she often wondered where he was going and whether his journey was really necessary. Petrol was already in short supply and—
‘Eileen?’
‘What?’
‘Is there someone else?’ He could not betray Nellie by mentioning the doctor.
‘No. I can’t fasten myself to anyone because of my three heroes. Bertie’s seven. It’ll be about ten years before I can think about myself. Where we lived, there was no way of containing them. I won’t inflict them on anybody, because they’re hard work.’
‘I agree that they’re hard work. But they can be improved.’
Eileen noted the challenge in his eyes. ‘You think you can tame them?’
‘I can try.’ He stood up. ‘Is it all right if I borrow a little kiss?’
She folded her arms. ‘And how do you pay back?’
‘With a second one.’
Shakespeare’s sonnets, dried flowers, his soul on paper. A flight of geese, the birth of a foal, the mending of a wall; all these he had given to her. Keith Greenhalgh was a tall, broad man, yet he was not intimidating. And she responded to his embrace, just as she had with Tom. Was she becoming a nymphomaniac, a trainee whore? She raised her hands and placed them on the back of his neck, because she didn’t want the kiss to end. Confused was not a strong enough adjective. This was a man she had known forever. ‘You’re adorable,’ she said when the kiss ended. ‘You owe me another one of those.’
Keith paid his dues. He forced his hands not to wander, and was careful not to push his body against hers. Etiquette had to be observed in most areas of life, and he was determined to be polite and controlled. His body had other ideas, but he would deny instinct and go slowly. She was too precious to be used for his own satisfaction.
The doorbell sounded, and Eileen broke away from her delightful visitor. ‘Get that, will you? I’ll make sure Miss Morrison’s all right.’
Keith reclaimed his ability to breathe before going to answer the door. He carried with him a slight smile, because Eileen had treated him like a member of the household – you do this, while I do that.
In the ex-dining room, Eileen found her charge fast asleep. Her hearing was deteriorating along with her heart, so the bell hadn’t disturbed her. Eileen smiled down on the old lady. When awake, this woman could talk all four legs off a table, but peace continued for now.
Not for long. Two people now occupied the kitchen, and one of them was clearly out of order. ‘Mam? What is it? Whatever’s happened?’
‘You tell her,’ Nellie said to Keith.
He had to hurt her. He had to be the one to say the words. ‘Eileen, your next-door neighbour won’t be coming back to Willows with me and your mother, because—’
‘Because she’s dead,’ Nellie said. He shouldn’t have to do the telling, so she needed to be brave.
Eileen dropped into a chair. ‘Kitty?’
Keith nodded.
‘But the kids?’ Eileen grasped her mother’s hand. ‘The kids, Mam?’
Nellie inhaled unsteadily. ‘She suffocated the poor little buggers. I found them.’ She began to rock backwards and forwards. ‘The smell. The terrible smell. I know the house stinks anyway, but this was … it was different. The police came. I had to answer questions, then they brought me here.’
‘Kitty?’
‘Was hanging in the back bedroom. All black, she was. The only white bits were her bloody teeth. How I got back downstairs I’ll never know. Just sat on her doorstep and screamed and screamed, I did. The police said it was unusual for a woman to hang herself. They usually swallow poison.’
Keith moved his chair and sat with an arm round Nellie’s shoulders. ‘Come on, love. She wasn’t right. I’ve heard you saying she wasn’t right. Sweetheart, don’t make yourself ill.’ He turned to Eileen. ‘Get Miss Morrison’s doctor. Your mam wants calming down.’
So the rivals met. Tom, forced to attend a woman who had given him a black eye before causing him to be attacked by a pair of dockers, doled out tablets and suggested that Nellie should not travel back to Bolton today, as she needed rest and quiet after the shock. Eileen explained the situation to Miss Morrison, who insisted that Nellie should share Eileen’s double bed, while the young man, whom she had not yet met, could use the small front bedroom, as her larger room was no longer furnished. ‘Terrible,’ the old lady said. ‘The husband barely cold in the grave, and now those poor, poor children. Feed everyone, dear. I shall meet your mother and Mr Greenhalgh later.’
While Eileen put her mother to bed, the two men stood in the kitchen. ‘So, you’re the land agent.’
‘Steward, yes. I’ve worked at Willows for about half my life. And you’re the one whose daughter’s a friend of Mel’s.’
‘Yes.’
Keith wanted to laugh. This situation put him in mind of childhood, when boys lined up to fight the king of the class. Anyone who beat the king took his invisible crown, and assumed the duty to defend it. This meant that a monarch fought every day on his way to school, at playtimes and at dinner time; even the homeward journey at the end of the day wasn’t safe. Once battered to within an inch of his life, he passed on the onerous position to the next lunatic in line. Keith had never been king. In his book, a king was a fool, and Shakespeare had proved that in at least one of his plays.
‘You have her boys?’ Tom asked.
‘Only on Saturdays. Nellie and Miss Pickavance look after them during th
e week. The youngest is settling; he has his own pony.’
‘Good, good.’
The doctor was clearly waiting for Eileen. He didn’t want to leave her in the company of Keith, who was fully aware of what was going on. The medic was handsome, married, and probably self-absorbed. He didn’t love or respect his wife, and he wanted Eileen Watson. ‘I’m staying tonight,’ Keith said. ‘If Nellie’s better, I’ll drive her home tomorrow.’
Tom lowered his head thoughtfully. ‘Look, I have work to do. Tell Eileen I’ll make sure the Maguires get a decent funeral. There’ll be no difficulty about declaring her of unsound mind, so she should be able to be buried with her husband. I helped then, too.’
Keith offered no reply. Tom Bingley was letting him know that he was already part of Eileen’s life, that he would control events resulting from three murders and one suicide. He was important, educated, middle-class and financially comfortable. And married, though he chose not to mention that fact.
‘I’ll … er … Tell Eileen I’ll see her later,’ Tom said.
Keith stayed exactly where he was while the doctor turned to leave. He knew with absolute certainty that Dr Bingley would leave his wife and family if Eileen said the word. He also knew that such a creature could never manage Philip and Rob Watson.
‘Young man?’ The voice came from the next room, and Keith tracked it to its source.
‘Help me up, please. Good. Yes, another pillow. Now.’ She smiled. ‘I’m Frances Morrison, and you are Keith Greenhalgh, so we can put the niceties out of the way. Would you make me a cup of tea, dear? Eileen’s with her mother. Oh, and a scone, please. Then you can tell me all about yourself. There are some pills marked two o’clock; she keeps them in the kitchen.’ The smile broadened. ‘This is the first time a man other than a doctor has entered my bedroom. Quite an adventure for me.’
‘Right. Tea and a scone, plus pills. Anything else?’
The old woman stared right through him. ‘She talks about you, enjoys your letters. You’re right for her. For obvious reasons, my doctor isn’t.’ She lowered her voice. ‘I’m not quite as deaf as I pretend to be. And I can walk further than people expect. The lady upstairs who found that poor family today has blacked his eye, I believe. She also set some of Eileen’s dead husband’s friends on him. He’s lucky to be alive, because we have some tough people on the docks.’ She looked him up and down. ‘I have never been married, young man, but I know a good match when I see one. And I see one now.’
Keith laughed.
But Miss Morrison had moved on. ‘They’re the first of Hitler’s Liverpool victims,’ she said. ‘The idea of going to live inland was too frightening, I suppose. Scotland Road has a quality too many of us ignore; it teems with all kinds of life, and humanity prevails. It’s a support system. She couldn’t leave her children, so she took them with her. Get my pills, there’s a good chap.’
In the kitchen, he found Eileen preparing Miss Morrison’s snack. ‘Is your mam asleep?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘The curtain between life and death’s thin, isn’t it? I should have stayed with Kitty.’ Suddenly, she staggered away from the tray she was about to lift. ‘She was already dead when Mel and I came here. I went in her house. The place was empty.’ She threw herself into Keith’s arms. ‘But it wasn’t empty. It had already happened, Keith. Thinking back, I never heard a sound from that place after Mam left for Willows.’
He pushed her into a chair before carrying the tray into Miss Morrison’s room. ‘Do you want this in bed, or shall we put you in the chair? Your pills are in the saucer.’
‘I’ll stay where I am. Go back to her at once.’
Keith carried his precious human burden into the front sitting room and closed the door. On a sofa, he held her until she ran out of tears before kissing her hands, her forehead, her eyes. ‘You did nothing wrong, love. It was nobody’s fault.’ He wished he had the ability to take her pain and feel it for her, as he could not bear the sight of her suffering. She was a giving person, a woman who cared. ‘Kitty can’t suffer any more, Eileen. Her children are no longer poor and deprived. In heaven, they’ll have shining faces.’
‘They were babies. If you caught them and hung on long enough to wash them, they were beautiful. Little Molly was just three. Kitty wasn’t well. There should be more help for people who get ill in their heads.’ She paused. ‘Kiss me on the mouth and let me know I’m alive.’
He followed her order, and she clung to him as if drowning. ‘You’re alive,’ he told her. ‘And while we’re alive, we should stick together and trust each other when it comes to your boys. You and I can manage just about anything.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes, I believe you, we’re a good team. But there’s a war to be got through when it starts. And Mel will be home in a while.’ She had to tell her daughter. Mam, who had discovered the bodies, should not be forced to relive yet again the scenes she had found in Rachel Street.
Eileen continued to cling to him, and Keith had an idea why. Sudden death often pushed people towards rash behaviour. Many a child was conceived in the aftermath of a funeral, because the bereaved hung on to each other in order to prove that life continued. ‘I’ll tell her if you like.’
‘Why?’
‘Because sometimes news as bad as this comes better from a stranger.’
‘And she’ll remember forever the first time you spoke to her. Meet her, by all means, but don’t be the one who tells her about Kitty and the children.’
Keith knew in that moment that Eileen was considering him as a potential suitor. She had spoken about the war as if she intended to be in his life when the conflict ended; now she was indicating that Mel should have a positive picture of him. ‘Can I be there when you tell her?’
‘Yes. Yes, I want you there, but let me say the words.’
‘All right.’
Through new tears, she smiled at him. ‘You sent me poems.’ ‘Yes.’
‘And letters full of word-pictures.’ ‘Yes.’
‘That’s friendship.’ ‘And more. Believe me, Eileen. It’s a lot more.’
Hilda Pickavance replaced the receiver and walked into the large kitchen. As ever, Philip, Rob and Bertie were reasonably well behaved in her presence. She should have been a teacher, as she would have needed no primitive weapons in order to keep control and hold the interest of her charges; Hilda was a born educator, but no one had noticed. And now she was alone once more with Eileen’s offspring, because their grandmother was being treated for shock.
As gently as possible, Hilda told the boys what had happened in the house next door to theirs.
‘Why?’ Bertie asked. ‘Why has she deaded herself and her kids?’
Mental illness was hard enough to explain to an adult; with children, it was a near-impossible task. ‘She was ill in her head,’ she tried.
‘A headache?’ The youngest boy’s eyes were rounded by astonishment. ‘She deaded her kids—’
‘Killed,’ interrupted Rob.
‘She killed Stephen and Lucy and Molly and herself because of a headache?’
‘Not that sort of ill,’ Philip snapped. ‘She went crackers. The thought of coming to live out here drove her mad.’ It was enough to drive anyone crazy, Philip believed. This dump was hell on earth, and Kitty Maguire had realized that. Sensibly, she had shuffled off before being landed with grass, cows, more grass, pigs, hens, goats, horses, more grass, walls, and a post office that sold paper, envelopes, stamps, matches, lamp oil and candles. Apart from all that there were hills with sheep on them. And a lot of grass.
‘She was afraid,’ Hilda said.
‘She was right to be afraid,’ Philip insisted. ‘Because if me and our Rob have to live here much longer, we’ll be out of our minds too.’ He folded his arms defiantly. ‘It’s horrible here, Miss Pickavance. The only good thing is the food, but we can’t sit eating all day, can we?’
Hilda pursed her lips and thought for a moment.
‘We’ve found you a school. It’s two miles away, and that’s no distance on a bicycle.’
‘Or a horse,’ Bertie cried.
‘It’s a school for older children,’ he was informed. ‘You’ll stay here with me. And when you do go to school, there’ll be no stable for Pedro, so forget that idea. Now, look at me, all of you.’ She waited until all the scuffling and whispering had ceased. ‘You are silly, ungrateful and petulant boys. Not you, Bertie. You are safe here, all three of you. Have you any idea of what is about to happen in Liverpool, especially near the waterfront?’
‘No,’ the older pair chorused.
She continued. ‘Since the reign of King John, Liverpool has been the gateway to the Atlantic. It’s the biggest docks in the world. Weapons and ammunition will be brought there for distribution. Germany will be aware of that, and bombs will be dropped. Do you want to die?’
They shook their heads.
‘I can tell you now, only London will be harder hit than Liverpool. You are here to stay alive. Now, go to your room, because I have things to do.’
When the boys had left, Hilda sat and gazed into the fire. She remembered that thin, almost toothless young woman who had lived across the street, three children clinging to her skirts, two girls, one boy, all dirty and with tangled, curly hair. The husband had come home from time to time, then his brief appearances stopped when he drowned in drink and the River Mersey. Kitty had finally got her teeth, and Dr Bingley had paid for them to be made more comfortable. Dead. All three children dead, the mother hanged in a back bedroom. Horrible.
She missed Nellie. There was something so solid and comforting about the woman, as if she knew everything there was to know about life. But poor Nellie was in shock, so she, too, clearly had her limits. One good thing had come from this dreadful mess. Eileen and Keith were together for a little while. They were well suited. If anything decent were to come from this war, a marriage between those two would be a clear winner. It was a match made in heaven, though hell had to be visited first.
The Liverpool Trilogy Page 51