Mel took it badly. Keith watched two beautiful women trying to comfort each other and, after deciding there was little else he could do, took over the cooking. Eileen picked at her meal, Mel made no effort, and Nellie slept through it, though Miss Morrison was complimentary. ‘Not just a pretty face, then, young man. How are they?’
Keith gave the best account he could manage.
‘So no one’s eating?’
‘No.’
‘Put it all in the larder. We can’t waste good food while there’s a war on. I need the pills marked five o’clock, and ask Eileen to come in when she’s in a better state, poor girl.’
While washing dishes, Keith realized how easy it was when a person lived alone: one cup, one plate, a few items of cutlery. Even so, he’d give up his freedom in a flash if Eileen would have him. Perhaps she would have him. After the war, after her youngest had had a few more birthdays, after Mel had gone to Oxford, Cambridge or wherever. Mel was a gorgeous girl, but he wondered whether she would ever match her mother for beauty. He didn’t doubt for one minute that no one could be as beautiful as Eileen. Could he possibly be prejudiced?
Mel went upstairs, Eileen sorted out Miss Morrison, and Keith found a book on the history of Crosby, amazed to discover that there was still a manor house in which the descendants of Blondell the Viking lived, that a person had to be a Catholic to have a cottage in Little Crosby, that any minerals found anywhere on any land reverted to the Blundell family. ‘It’s still feudal,’ he muttered. ‘The only completely Catholic village in England. All that’s changed is the spelling, from Blondell to Blundell. Well, we live and learn.’
Eileen entered the kitchen. ‘They want toast,’ she said. ‘Miss Morrison’s asleep, but Mam and Mel have ordered toast and tea.’ She passed him the toasting fork. ‘You hold that in front of the fire and I’ll find you some bread to stick on the end of it. I wish …’ She started to cut the loaf.
‘Wish what?’
‘That you were staying permanently. I feel safe with you here.’
For now, this had to be enough. She wanted him in her life, and he toasted her bread.
Eileen was a bad woman. She was sitting on the stairs holding a lighted candle and wearing no more than a thin nightie, and she knew he was just feet away. What the scouse with pickled beetroot was she thinking of? Was she nursing a vague idea that if she gave herself to Keith, Tom the Torment would disappear in a puff of smoke? No. She wasn’t quite that daft. ‘I’m an honest woman,’ she told the banisters. She had kept herself to herself since the death of Laz, and—
His door opened. ‘Eileen?’ he whispered.
‘What?’
‘Are they all right?’
‘Yes.’
He came to sit next to her.
‘Hello, Julius,’ she said. ‘Or are you et tu Brute?’
‘Keith will do, thanks. Are they asleep?’ He hung on to his sheet. ‘No pyjamas,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t wear them anyway, but I would have brought some with me if I’d known. Are they asleep?’ he repeated.
‘Both doped,’ she told him. ‘Mam had a double dose. It said on the bottle two at night if required.’ He was virtually naked, as was she. ‘And Mel was crying, so I knocked her out, too.’
‘The Crosby poisoner,’ he breathed. ‘And you’re wide awake.’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘You’re the same. Why?’
Keith chuckled quietly. ‘Only the guilty answer a question with a question.’
‘I can’t work out what’s the matter with me,’ she said. ‘But it’s as if I’ve known you all my life. A woman I cared about died today, and all I can think about is being with you.’
Yes, here she came, the girl he loved. The honesty that always shone in her eyes was pouring softly from lips he wanted to devour, but he continued to hold on to his sheet. Eileen was capable of naughtiness. This delightful trait, coupled with intelligence and humour, was all he wanted in a wife. ‘I won’t take advantage,’ he declared.
‘No, but I might.’
‘You mustn’t.’
She looked him full in the face. ‘Never tell me what to do or what not to do. I’m contrary. You’ll notice the same stubbornness in my sons, and in my daughter. So.’ She touched his hand. ‘You don’t want me?’
‘Don’t talk daft.’
‘You do want me?’
‘Stupid question.’
‘You’re as bloody-minded as I am.’
‘Yes. I don’t want to face you tomorrow if you have regrets.’
Eileen stood up, climbed the top few stairs and entered the room she was currently sharing with her mother, who snored. She wondered whether Keith snored. If she spent the night with him, she might find out. In the interests of research, a person needed to gain as much information as possible in order to compare and tabulate results. Who was she kidding? She had met her Waterloo and her second husband. The boys would do as they were bloody well told, and that would be an end to their shenanigans. ‘I may be in love,’ she told her sleeping mother. ‘And if you wake, you’ll know where I am.’
Mam didn’t approve of sex outside marriage, but Eileen nursed the suspicion that an exception might be made in this case. Everyone liked Keith. Even Mel, who’d been terribly upset about the Maguire family, had voiced her approval. As for Tom Bingley, he could hang himself out to dry, because his luck was running out fast. Hang himself? She shouldn’t have thought those words, because poor Kitty …
In the bathroom, Eileen cleaned her teeth for the second time tonight. She washed her face, combed her hair and walked into his room where she pressed herself ham-actress-fashion across his door. ‘I must tell you something,’ she said in a voice that wasn’t a bad imitation of some Hollywood queen. ‘I have stretch marks.’ She blew out her candle.
A small night light burned on the mantelpiece, and the pair gazed at each other in the glow of its meagre flame.
‘Are you sure?’ he asked.
‘You can look at them if you like.’
‘Eileen!’
‘What?’
‘Are you sure about this?’
‘Yes. There’s something about you I can’t ignore, as if we’ve met before. And I know you feel the same, so why wait? The worst that can happen is a baby, and we’d cope. Don’t worry, I think I’ve already decided to make an honest man of you, Keith Greenhalgh. I’ll still respect you tomorrow after I’ve had my wicked way.’
‘Come here.’
So for once, Eileen did as she was bidden. She perched on the edge of the bed and on the hemline of sin while he looked at her sternly, as if he were her father. ‘What’s the matter?’ she mouthed softly.
‘Dr Bingley is the matter. And don’t bother asking how I know, because I felt the change in the tone of your letters. Also, he made it perfectly plain today that he regards you as his property. Don’t mess me about, Eileen Watson. You’re beautiful, and you know how I feel about you. But the world is not your oyster. This is a difficult moment for me, and it can’t be easy for you, because you know how beautiful and desirable you are, so rejection’s something you won’t expect. Yes, I love you; no, I won’t share you.’
Eileen stared down at him. He was in even deeper shadow now, since she sat between him and the candlelight. She was angry, mostly with herself.
‘You have to work out whether you want to be a rich man’s mistress, or a working man’s wife.’ He sighed. ‘He stood in that kitchen today and looked at me as if I were rubbish.’
She rose to her feet. ‘You don’t know me at all. There’s been no one since Laz, because I respect myself too much. Tom’s a pain in the neck, but I’m used to that kind of thing. But you?’ She raised both hands in a gesture of despair. ‘I decided, very foolishly, that you were probably right for me.’
‘So go away and lose the probably.’
‘Did you wonder about Tom when you kissed me?’
Keith considered that. ‘No. I thought about this moment, all the time knowing th
at it shouldn’t happen yet. Courtship takes time. Because of the way I am, love comes suddenly and not often. You’re female.’
‘You noticed.’
‘Yes. Females calculate. If you watch the animal kingdom, the males have to work themselves silly. Their mates think long and hard, because they’re the ones who get invaded and impregnated. Humans are the same. Do your thinking. If you need to sleep with him, get it over with, but don’t try me for size first.’ He paused and smiled. ‘That wasn’t intended to be vulgar.’
For a while, she didn’t know what to say. He was sending her away, and she hadn’t expected that, but, as a Liverpudlian woman, she needed the last word. ‘I wasn’t intending to give you a reference, or marks out of ten for performance. I came here because the probably had begun to disappear. Big mistake, eh?’
‘Eileen?’
‘What?’
‘I love you. I love you too much to lose you by that mistake.’
With that, she was forced to be satisfied. Back in her own room with a snoring mother for company, Eileen spent a sleepless night. How could she meet his eyes in the morning? Why had she placed herself in such an embarrassing position? But that was just pride. The fact was that Tom flaming Bingley was stamping on her life, and nothing this side of death seemed enough to put a stop to him. Keith, an old-fashioned type with Victorian values, was too sensitive for his own good. There was no probably. The probably had died while she’d read his letters, because their minds had met. Which fact didn’t mean they would always agree, but the fights would be fun.
When morning came, she went down to prepare the coddled egg and milky tea that were her patient’s usual breakfast. She carried in the tray, placed it on a bedside table, and found Tom Bingley on her heels. ‘I’m here to see your mother,’ he said. ‘Good morning, Miss Morrison. How are you today?’
But the old woman was concentrating her attention on Eileen, who didn’t seem right. Frances Morrison leapt from her bed with surprising alacrity just as her carer fell in a dead faint. ‘Pick her up. Put her on my bed. See if her heart’s good.’
‘Just exhaustion,’ he said after a brief examination. ‘She probably didn’t get enough sleep.’ He listened to Eileen’s heart. ‘Yes, she’ll be fine. I’ll leave a tonic.’ Had she been kept awake by Keith Greenhalgh?
Frances Morrison had seen and heard enough lately. She had to do something about this situation. ‘Now, I don’t want you to take offence, but in future I’d like to be attended by Dr Ryan. I think you know why.’
‘What? No, I don’t know why. Have I neglected you in some way?’
‘No. You’ve been very attentive, especially since Mrs Watson came to live here. I’m not quite as deaf as I appear to be. Thank you for all you have done, but leave us now. She and I will care for each other, and Dr Ryan can look after both of us. Goodbye, Dr Bingley. I shall get Dr Ryan to look at Mrs Kennedy when she wakes from her drug-induced sleep.’
This conversation drifted into Eileen’s ears as she neared consciousness. She opened one eye and looked at Tom. ‘Hey, you,’ she said.
‘Yes?’
‘Shut your mouth. There’s a tram coming.’
Frances Morrison turned to face the window. She wanted to laugh, but she mustn’t …
Ten
Nellie was complaining about musical beds. She had left her place of rest, and her daughter was now flat out on the same mattress because she hadn’t slept a wink. ‘Never mind,’ she said finally. ‘I’ll go downstairs and get to know Miss Morrison, then you can go and live at Willows. We should get you out of here and away from you-know-who.’
But Eileen was having none of that. ‘I’m not leaving Mel. We’ll take turns, like we said. And I have to think about stuff. When it starts, I’m going to be there, do my bit for my country.’
‘Eh?’
‘The bombs. There’s a war on in case you’ve forgotten. I know people are calling it a dummy war, but it won’t always be this quiet’
Nellie dropped onto the dressing stool. ‘And what good will you be to Mel dead? What good will you be to anyone?’
‘Mam, you can say that about any mother or father. I’m joining the WVS and I’ll do my knitting and stuff here. But when it all kicks off, I’ll be at my post on Scotland Road. It’s not just soldiers and sailors, you know. We all have to fight for our children. Don’t start. I am going to help in this bloody war no matter what you think or say. It’ll be for a couple of hours a week, and Mel can mind Miss Morrison. Go and look after that old lady. She sacked him.’
‘Sacked who?’
‘Dr Thomas Bingley. Tell Keith I want tea, toast, butter, marmalade and something to read. Probably.’
Nellie folded her arms. ‘So you got rid of one, and you’re ordering the other about as if he’s already wed to you? Our Mel’s the same. She changes when there’s men about. Like you, she knows her power, doesn’t she?’
‘Probably,’ Eileen repeated. The probably had to go. Keith had said last night that there couldn’t be any probably, because she had to love him and only him. He had made a takeover bid, and she was sorely tempted, but the war needed to be over first, didn’t it? Did it? At this rate, they wouldn’t get to kick off till about 1950, by which time there’d be no sugar, no petrol, no fruit … She couldn’t do without him for that long. Yes, she loved him. Probably. He made her tingle, anyway.
‘Are you listening to me, soft girl? Did what I found yesterday mean nothing? You’ll be as dead as Kitty if you start bloody WVS-ing.’
But Eileen had made up her mind. Everyone was in danger. The whole of society in several countries was being threatened by a jumped-up jackass with a toothbrush under his nose and eyes that seldom blinked. That, she had read somewhere, was a symptom of psychosis, so he was likely to be as mad as a frog in a bin. He was also unforgivably ugly, and she was going to help to save people from the craziness of a man who was rumoured to have lived for a while in Liverpool. ‘Upper Stanhope Street,’ she declared. ‘I bet you never knew about that, eh?’
‘You what?’
‘Hitler lived there until 1913 with his brother Alois and sister-in-law Bridget. She was Irish.’
Nellie made the sign of the cross. ‘God bless us and save us,’ she muttered. ‘We nursed the devil in our bosom, may the angels preserve our souls. That’s terrible.’
Mam was funny. Reared by an illiterate but wise Irish mother, she was full of little sayings and prayers that sounded as if they were issuing from someone born in County Mayo. She’d start singing ‘Faith of our Fathers’ in a minute. ‘Mam, I fainted. Food would be good.’
Nellie stalked out of the room and went downstairs. No sooner had she entered the kitchen than he started his mithering. How was Eileen, was she looking better, did Nellie think she’d be all right, should he take her to the hospital, did she need anything? He went on and on until Nellie told him to shut up, or she would remove his tongue by any means that came to hand. ‘Are you engaged to her or something?’ she asked, the tone trimmed with sarcasm.
‘Probably.’
‘What does probably mean, Keith?’
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Ask her.’
It had been a difficult time for poor Nellie. She remembered the Sunday on which war had been declared, remembered Kitty comforting her and telling her to bear up. But Kitty had been the one in true need of support. ‘I should have sent her first,’ she mumbled to herself.
‘Eh?’
‘Kitty,’ she snapped. ‘Look. I love the bones of that girl upstairs, but she’s not the centre of the bloody universe.’ She gave him a hard, penetrating look. ‘But she’s the centre of yours, isn’t she?’
He averted his gaze. ‘Yes.’
Nellie sat down. ‘Well, I can tell you this for no money, I would be made up. I would, lad. But let’s get on, shall we? You’ve to make her some toast and take it up. I’ve got to get sense out of that telephone thing and talk to Hilda. We may have to stay another couple of nights and sort out the f
uneral. In which case, you’ll need to go and buy underclothes. I can manage with our Eileen’s at a pinch, and it is a bloody pinch. So you do the queen’s breakfast while I sort things out with Miss Morrison. Oh, and Madam Butterfly says she’s joining the WVS and going into the bomb zone when it all kicks off.’ She marched off muttering that if it wasn’t one thing it was another, and some people should sleep at night instead of running after men and being too soft in the head to eat a decent breakfast.
When Keith finally got upstairs, Eileen was asleep. He placed the tray on a small table and sat with her. She had fainted due to lack of nourishment, yet he wasn’t happy about waking her. ‘Eileen? Come on, you have to eat.’
She opened one eye. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Getting a lecture from your mother.’
‘About what?’
‘Everything.’
‘Right.’ Having been a recipient of such diatribes for most of her life, she found his explanation acceptable. Between bites of toast, she delivered the opinion that Mam took some getting used to, and advised him to develop a degree of deafness. Miss Morrison found the affliction useful, and so would he when they got back to Willows. ‘Miss Morrison sacked Tom Bingley because he was getting on my nerves, not hers. So she’s heard him and me quarrelling, and that’s because she pretends she can’t hear. Just a suggestion.’
‘It won’t stop the doc chasing you,’ Keith said.
‘I know. I’ve had many a hopeful follower since Laz died, and I’ll manage, thanks. All you need is a giant flyswatter, because if you hit them in the fly it upsets them.’
She was better. She was feisty, slightly vulgar, and almost back to normal. ‘Come out with me,’ he begged. ‘Nellie’s getting to know Miss M, and I need to—’
‘I’m not leaving Mam. After what she went through yesterday, she needs me.’
The door swung inward. ‘Get some sleep, then go out with him. Me and Frances is getting along great, ta very much. Anyway, Dr Wotsit’s paid for the funeral, and they can all fit in with Charlie. But the bodies are down the hospital getting looked at. There have to be certificates before they get released. Me and Keith can’t stay here long, because Hilda’s stuck up Willows with them three.’ She looked Keith up and down. ‘If you’re going to marry this one, I hope you know what you’ll be taking on.’
The Liverpool Trilogy Page 52