by Maureen Lee
Perhaps John had read his thoughts, because he turned round and said coldly, ‘I can’t think why Clare went to see Alice. I was a bit surprised, that’s all, when I came home tonight and found she and the kids had gone. We haven’t exactly been getting on in a long time. It’ll feel strange for a while without the children, but even that has its compensations. They were dead noisy and I’ve always liked a quiet life.’
He was lying, it was obvious, but Danny didn’t care. He’d asked and the man claimed to be all right. His task was done. ‘I’ll be off, then.’
‘I’ll see you out.’
‘Don’t bother. I’ll make me own way. Tara, John.’
The front door closed. John Lacey fell to his knees on the rug in front of the fire. His mouth opened in a silent scream and he beat the floor with his fists. He wanted to roll up in a ball of pain.
Clare had gone, the children. He knew in his heart he would never see them again. He had driven them away, just as he drove everyone away. He prayed to God to make him die.
Minutes later, or it might have been hours, when God seemed unprepared to answer his prayer and John hadn’t the courage to take matters into his own hands, he got to his feet and went round the house gathering together a few possessions, which he threw in the back of the van parked outside.
The landlord could have his house back, as well as everything in it. From now on he’d live in the office at the yard. From now on nothing mattered any more.
Chapter 10
Cora bought the Liverpool Echo especially. She opened it as soon as she got home and searched for Twenty-Firsts.
‘LACEY, Cormac John. Many Happy Returns, son, on your twenty-first. With all my love, Mum,’ she read.
There were three more entries for Cormac: from Maeve and Martin, from Orla and Micky and the children, and the last from Grandad, Bernadette, Ian and Ruth: ‘Congratulations to a fine young man on reaching his majority.’
There would be no entries tomorrow for Maurice Lacey. Anyone who knew him would have laughed, because Maurice was in Walton jail.
Oh, the shame of it! Since the court case Cora had hardly left the house. She did the shopping Strand Road way where she wasn’t known, rather than in Marsh Lane.
She still didn’t know what had got into Maurice. He’d lost his job – he was ‘unpunctual’, according to his boss. Cora had considered it fortunate that he’d been called up to do his National Service almost straight away. It would do him good, teach him the discipline that Cora had failed to do. But the minute he came out he’d started hanging around with a girl, Pamela Conway, who had a reputation for being no better than she ought to be. It was Pamela’s brothers who’d led Maurice astray, of that Cora was convinced. They were much older than him, with convictions for breaking and entering behind them. One had threatened a shopkeeper with a knife and wasn’t long out of jail himself.
They’d used Maurice. He was a soft lad, easily led. He’d broken a window to get into the shop and it hadn’t entered his daft head that someone might hear and call the bobbies. They were waiting for him when he came out, laden with boxes of cigarettes and baccy, almost certainly for the Conways to sell in the pubs at half price. He refused to clat on them. Cora suspected he was frightened.
For once, Billy had been in when the bobbies arrived and requested they come to the station, where he’d leapt at Maurice and had almost throttled him by the time he was pulled off. He wanted nothing more to do with him, he said. But when had Billy had anything much to do with his wife and son?
She recalled her own criminal past, though she’d been too clever to get caught. Perhaps thieving was inherited, like the same coloured eyes and hair. But if that was the case, Cormac . . .
Sometimes she forgot what the truth was.
By now, Cormac would be home from university for Christmas and there was bound to be a birthday do somewhere tonight – Alice threw parties at the drop of a hat.
Restless, Cora wandered round the house, touching things. It wasn’t fair. Nothing was fair. Nothing had gone the way she’d expected. Horace Flynn had popped his clogs last year, but hadn’t left her a thing. The chap who came to collect the rent said a nephew back in Ireland, a priest, had inherited the lot and wanted everything left the same. All the chap did was collect the leases and the rents, and send cheques to some church in County Antrim. When Cora asked why Horace’s big house in Stanley Road remained empty, he knew nothing about it.
She wondered if Cormac’s do would be held at home or whether Alice had booked somewhere bigger, seeing as how it was a twenty-first. Wherever it was, she wouldn’t mind going and waiting outside so she could take a peek, see who was there – if she could do it without being noticed, that is.
They’d probably know in the Strand Road salon – she looked inside whenever she passed. It was always busy, but she’d never once seen Alice there. It looked a posh place, much bigger than the Laceys’ in Opal Street and Marsh Lane. But she couldn’t just barge in asking questions, she’d have to have something done to her hair. She’d get a trim, though she usually cut it herself, and give a false name. It wouldn’t do to say she was a Lacey.
The thought cheered her up somewhat. It gave her a reason for getting out of the house. She’d go now.
Cora went into the hall and lifted her camel coat off a hook. It was twelve years old, but good quality and she wouldn’t have dreamt of buying another until it wore out. She pushed her small feet into a pair of stout suede boots that were even older than the coat, then tied a scarf round her head. For some women, appearance was everything, but Cora didn’t give a damn. She fastened the buttons in front of the full-length mirror. She was fifty-one and looked neither younger nor older. Not a soul in the world would have given her a second glance.
The woman in Lacey’s who was doing her hair was called Enid. Cora would suit it shorter, she said. It would give it more texture and she’d look like June Allyson. ‘She’s a film star,’ she went on in response to Cora’s puzzled look. ‘She was in Little Women and Executive Suite.’
‘I don’t get to the pictures much.’
‘Don’t you, luv? Me, I go at least three times a week.’
Cora said she’d prefer to stick to just an inch off, thanks all the same. She was about to add sourly that she had more important things to do with her time than go to the pictures three times a week, but remembered she wanted to pump the woman for information. This proved easy when she mentioned she was an old friend of Alice whom she hadn’t seen in years. ‘How’s her kids getting on? Four she had, didn’t she? Three girls and a boy – he was almost exactly the same age as me own lad.’
‘In that case your lad must be round twenty-one, like Cormac. It’s his birthday today. He’s a smashing lad – I sent him a silver key meself. We’re all going to his party tonight.’
‘And where would that be?’
‘You know Hilton’s Restaurant on Stanley Road? Well, it’s in the room above. There’s at least fifty of us going. Alice has invited all the staff and Cormac has asked some friends from school and university. Did you know he’s at Cambridge, luv? He’s taking Chemistry, if you’ll believe.’ The woman couldn’t have sounded prouder had Cormac been her own son. ‘After he’s got his degree, he’s going to stay and get more letters after his name. When he leaves he’ll be called doctor.’
Cora waited until eight o’clock before stationing herself across the road from Hilton’s, a large restaurant well known as a venue for wedding receptions and parties. It was situated on the corner of busy Stanley Road and Greening Street. The double-fronted downstairs was in darkness. She could hear the noise of the party upstairs, the music and the chatter, the laughing and the singing, from all this way away, despite the passing trams and other traffic.
Why was she doing this, cowering in a doorway on a freezing cold night in December, listening to other people enjoying themselves? Because this night had been stolen from her, she told herself. This night should be hers. It should be her throwing the p
arty for Cormac.
She waited a good hour, huddled inside her coat, stamping her feet, her gaze fixed hypnotically on the lighted upstairs windows opposite. There was no way she’d see a thing from here and she wanted to know what was going on. Spots of ice blew against her face as she crossed over and went down Greening Street to the side door of the restaurant where people had been going in. Hopping from one foot to the other, she stood hesitantly outside before pushing the door open, though she didn’t go in. Narrow stairs led upwards and the noise here was deafening, a whooping and stamping of feet, as if people were doing some strange sort of dance. Cora had never been to a dance.
Dare she go in? Sneak upstairs, just peer through the door, so she didn’t feel totally excluded from Cormac’s twenty-first?
Well, even if she was discovered, she was unlikely to be chucked out on her ear. Alice would never be rude. Fion would have been, except she wasn’t there. The woman in the salon said she was still living in London.
Cora crept upstairs, making not a sound in her crèpe-soled boots. To her left at the top there was a Ladies and a Gents, a kitchen and a door marked ‘Office’. The whoops and stamping came from behind the door to her right.
Someone – it was Bernadette Mitchell – was coming out of the kitchen carrying a birthday cake with the candles already lit, too concerned with watching her feet in case she tripped over to notice Cora, who shot into the Ladies, heart thumping.
The music and the stamping suddenly stopped. There was utter silence for a minute, then ‘Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday to you, Happy birthday, dear Cormac . . .’
They loved him. Everyone loved Cormac.
Cormac, Maurice. Maurice, Cormac. The names chased each other around Cora’s brain. She’d thought she was doing a good thing all them years ago, but she’d done a bad one. If only she’d left things as they were, it would be Alice with a lad in Walton jail, not her. If only she could go back twenty-one years and put everything right.
The Ladies was a large room that doubled as a cloakroom. Two sides of the walls were full of coats, and there were two lavatories. Cora went inside one and closed the door. She pulled down the seat to sit on. They were singing ‘For he’s a jolly good fellow’ now. Alice was probably hanging on to his arm, looking gormless. She didn’t deserve Cormac for a son.
Oh, it wasn’t fair!
There was a sudden rush of women into the Ladies. They kept trying Cora’s door. ‘Who’s in there?’ someone said. ‘They’ve been ages.’
A few minutes later there was a knock. ‘Are you all right?’ It was that bloody Patsy woman who worked for Alice.
‘Yes,’ Cora replied gruffly.
The Ladies emptied. The music started again, quieter now, romantic music. She imagined the lights turned low and everyone dancing, and wondered if Cormac had a girlfriend with him.
Not long afterwards the women returned to collect their coats. The party must be over. From their conversation, they’d had a dead good time. After about fifteen minutes of bustle there was silence. Alice hadn’t been in for her coat, Cora would have recognised her voice. Unlatching the door, she came out to find only a handful of coats left on the hooks and wondered if she could make it from the lavatory to the stairs without being seen, otherwise she might end up being locked in the building all night.
There was no one in the kitchen. Cora had reached the top of the stairs and was about to creep down as quietly as she’d come, when she noticed the door to the big room was open and there was still music, very faint, so faint that it was almost drowned out by the noise of the traffic outside.
She paused. At the far end, Orla and Maeve were dancing with their husbands: that no-mark Micky Lavin and the one who had a good job at the hospital, Martin. Danny and Bernadette were standing by a radiogram, sifting through records. Cora edged closer until Alice came into view. She wore a lovely bottle-green dress with a fluted hem and was sprawled on a chair, legs stretched out in front, clearly worn out. But Cora didn’t think she’d ever seen such a look of perfect contentment on a face before. Alice quite literally glowed. Her face seemed to be exuding darts of electricity and Cora felt her own face prickle, as if from tiny electric shocks. Her sister-in-law was experiencing the happiness that was her due, the happiness that had been denied her all these years.
She edged closer, her eyes searching for Cormac. He appeared, inch by inch, bending over Alice. He wore black trousers and a white shirt that looked too big for him, she thought. It was all bunched up round the waist where it was tucked inside a narrow belt. He might have started off the evening with a tie, but wasn’t wearing one now. The collar of the shirt was open, emphasising his slender neck. Cora’s heart missed a beat. He looked dead handsome. He and Alice were laughing together about something. The whole scene looked like a painting of Happy Families. Then Cormac suddenly reached out and stroked Alice’s hair.
Something snapped in the watching woman. Her head felt as if it was full of smoke: thick, black smoke, that swirled around and got hotter and hotter.
By now, Maurice would have kipped down in his cell. ‘Lights Out’ would have been called. Everywhere smelt of pee, he claimed. The food was awful. After a few months, Cora had stopped going to see him. She didn’t know what to say and the other visitors were scum. She felt ashamed, mixing with them. She wasn’t sure if she wanted Maurice back home. She wasn’t sure if she loved him any more.
This was her son, her lad, the fruit of her womb, this fair-haired, clever, extremely dashing young man.
‘Drat!’ Alice had kicked something over. A glass of wine. The liquid spilled like blood on to the polished floor.
‘I’ll get a cloth from the kitchen.’ Cormac began to hurry towards the door, towards Cora, the son towards his mother. God must have arranged for that glass to be knocked over.
Cora backed up so that she was in the kitchen when Cormac came in. He jumped, startled. ‘Aunt Cora! I didn’t know you were here. Why don’t you go in the big room with me mam?’
She fixed her eyes squarely on his neat, good-looking face. ‘You’re mine,’ she said in a deep, passionate voice that she didn’t know she possessed.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Cormac said courteously.
‘I said, you’re mine,’ she continued in the same unnatural voice. ‘The night you were born, I swapped you round for Maurice. I went for a walk in the hospital. Everyone was asleep, ’cept me. When I came to the nursery, Maurice was in the cot marked Lacey 1, and you were in Lacey 2. I changed you round.’
Cormac was actually smiling. ‘Don’t talk rubbish, Aunt Cora. I don’t like to be rude, but I’ve never heard such ridiculous nonsense.’
‘It’s not nonsense, luv. It’s true,’ Cora insisted hoarsely.
He laughed. ‘Things like that aren’t allowed to happen in hospitals.’
‘They happened that night. There was a raid. It was like hell on earth, women and babies all over the place: in the cellar one minute, in the wards the next.’ Cora clutched his arm, but he shrugged her away.
‘This is going beyond a joke.’ His voice had become icy cold. ‘I’m sorry about Maurice being in prison, Aunt Cora, but it doesn’t mean you have to spoil my twenty-first for me.’
He thought she was saying things out of spite! ‘Oh, luv,’ she cried. She reached for him, but he moved away with an expression of distaste. ‘I don’t want to spoil anything, I just thought it was time you knew the truth. I told you, it was bedlam in the hospital, nurses rushing around like lunatics. There was this emergency. Alice wasn’t shown her baby till next morning, when they gave her you ’stead of Maurice. It’s not your twenty-first till tomorrer. It’s Maurice who’s twenty-one today.’
It seemed as if the reference to the birthdays, trivial in comparison with the other things she’d said, had sewn a seed of doubt in Cormac’s mind. He went as white as a sheet. ‘Just supposing,’ he said carefully, ‘just supposing there’s a grain of truth in what you’ve said, what on earth would possess you to do suc
h a wicked thing?’
Cora smiled slyly. ‘Because I thought Maurice looked the better bet, but it turned out I was wrong.’
‘Jaysus!’
She felt slightly uneasy at the sight of his gentle face contorted with horror and disgust. Perhaps she should have approached it differently, or at least thought things through before she opened her big mouth. Perhaps it would have been best if she’d told Alice first. Alice knew the way things had been that night and would have been easier to convince.
‘Cormac!’ Alice shouted. ‘Where’s that cloth?’
‘Won’t be a minute, Mam.’ His face had cleared, become devoid of expression. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re just making trouble, something you’re very good at, going by past experience.’
‘Just take a look at yourself in the mirror, son,’ Cora said softly. She’d upset him badly, which was only to be expected. She felt a surge of sympathy that made her body ache, but no way was she going to deny that what she’d said was true. She’d already suffered enough for that one silly mistake. ‘It’s never crossed anyone’s mind to notice, but you’re the spitting image of me, your mam – the same shaped face, the same little hands.’ Alice had long, thin hands, John’s were broad. She held out her own hands, spreading the small fingers, regarding them impassively. ‘See, son.’
For the first time in Cormac’s life his legendary calm deserted him. ‘Don’t you dare call me “son”. I’m not your son. I’d sooner die than be your son. I want nothing to do with you.’ He could hardly speak. The words came out thickly, as if his tongue had got too big for his mouth.
Cora chewed her bottom lip. She didn’t like seeing her boy in such a state, but what had she expected? For him to throw himself into her arms? All this must have come as a terrible shock. ‘Why don’t we get Alice out here?’ she suggested.
‘Does Mam know?’
‘No, but it’s about time she did.’ She thought Cormac was about to hit her. He reared over her, pushed his face in hers. ‘Don’t you dare breathe a word about this to me mam, d’you hear? It would kill her. I don’t want anyone else to know. Do you hear me, Aunt Cora. I don’t want anyone else to know.’