The Corner House

by Ruth Hamilton

  About the Book

  When, one dark night in 1939, young Theresa Nolan was brutally raped by three young men, it was the beginning of a series of tragic and dramatic events. For the young men were not criminals or vagrants, but the sons of wealthy and privileged businessmen. Pregnant, thrown out of her home by her bigoted father, Theresa vowed a lifetime of vengeance on the men who had wrecked her future. Physically frail, but filled with a burning anger that fuelled her weak body, she determined that nothing and no-one was going to deflect her from her path of retribution, not even the gentle man who cared for her during her sickness and whom she eventually came to love.

  But there were others caught in the web of violence and deceit: Bernard Walsh and his brother Danny, and Eva, the midwife who had befriended Theresa and had seen her through her pregnancy. Above all there were two children, bonded together from birth, whose lives were to play their part in the drama of Theresa Nolan.

  With all the rich characters and traditions of Liverpool and the north-west, Ruth Hamilton has created another magnificent story of passion and conflict.

  Contents

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  November, 1964

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  April 1965

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Also by Ruth Hamilton

  Copyright

  The Corner House

  Ruth Hamilton

  In memory of Dame Catherine Cookson, inspiration to so many, kindness itself to me.

  Also Tom Cookson, husband of Dame Catherine.

  May God bless and cherish these two fine souls.

  In spite of a certain female critic who objects to my ‘sentimentality’ with animals, I say goodbye on this page to Benny and Scooby, two scruffy little mongrels aged sixteen and fifteen respectively. Both were humanely put to sleep on 1 July 1998 in the Corner House, which happens to be my home. They are so very sadly missed.

  I welcome into my life Samson, two-year-old black Labrador with the sweetest temperament.

  Also Fudge, chocolate Labrador aged three months, who has, in just over a fortnight, eaten his way through the bottom drawer of my bureau, some trainers with (according to my son) A Designer Name, the landing carpet, something called a joystick, a roll of sticky tape, two kitchen mats and a twenty-pound note. We all love him dearly in spite of his misdeeds.

  The seamen’s mission depicted within these pages is a mere figment of this writer’s imagination and bears absolutely no relationship whatsoever to any of the existing institutions of that nature whose excellent work can only be admired and commended. Liverpool has always looked after its seafarers and may it long continue to do just that.

  NOVEMBER, 1964

  It was a cold, grey morning with leaden clouds pressing down as if intending to impose their gloomy weight on the Mersey. The Liver Birds continued their eternal vigil; a tanker, its replete belly low in the water, drifted silently towards the next resting place. On the rail that divided land from water, several gulls cast beady eyes over flagstones in search of food.

  Bernard Walsh, who was used to ice, did not even shiver as people hurried behind him towards buses with shopping, umbrellas and wailing children. He saw little and heard nothing, simply bowing his head and staring downward with the special passivity that visits the truly absorbed. She was dead. This morning, at the shop, the news had finally arrived. ‘Oh, Katherine,’ he whispered now. How could he tell Katherine that her mother’s life was over?

  He hadn’t even managed to be at the bedside. His wife had died while he, Bernard Walsh, husband, father and fishmonger, had used his expertise to prepare and sell the chilled, glass-eyed fruits of Britain’s coastal waters.

  Urging himself to focus, he cleaned thick-lensed spectacles on a handkerchief, then watched the tanker drifting lazily into dock. He dragged his sad mind back into the present tense just as a female child screamed and complained about cold fingers. Katherine did not like the cold. She would be at work now, would be drumming facts into the tousled heads of thirty-four children at St Anthony’s School on Scotland Road. Pretty, talented, happy Katherine, what a blessing she had proved to be.

  Liz’s sufferings were over. Liz was lying now beneath a snow-white sheet in the morgue at Walton Hospital. No longer would Bernard Walsh spend his evenings in the company of a comatose woman. In recent weeks, he had sat and watched the cruel and unforgiving disease consume his beloved wife. How on earth had he coped without her humour, her tenderness? Towards the end, Liz had drifted away into a morphine-induced retreat of her own, had been fed through tubes, had been bathed and tended by nurses like a helpless child. Even so, she had been alive. Bernard had half expected her to jump up and tell the nurses what to do with all their gadgets and needles, but Liz had remained a poor, crippled, ageing infant. He had never looked at another woman. He had been that rare beast: a happily married man.

  Katherine. Newborn, she had been perfect, almost magical. A smile threatened to stretch his lips, and he refused to allow such an unsuitable expression to gain purchase. His wife was dead and, if he chose the path of righteousness, there was further heartbreak to come. The right thing. What was the right thing?

  ‘Bernard?’

  He sighed, and fixed myopic eyes on the man at his side. ‘How did you know I’d be here?’

  John Povey rested a hand on his friend’s shoulder. Since his arrival in Liverpool, Bernard Walsh had always visited the river in times of stress.

  ‘I can’t do it,’ mumbled Bernard.

  ‘Not today. It doesn’t have to be today.’ John trembled as a frosty wind sliced like a cruel knife through clothing and into his chest. ‘Aren’t you freezing?’

  Bernard shook his head. The tall, rounded fishmonger seldom complained of cold, though the gradual erosion of his hair had driven him to wearing headgear: a trilby outside; a white hat while serving in his shop.

  ‘I suppose you’ll be used to it.’

  ‘Aye, I am that.’ For over thirty years, Bernard Walsh had worked with fish. The skin on his hands was so weathered that a clogger might have pinned irons to it without the need for anaesthesia. ‘You’ve heard, then?’

  John nodded. ‘I popped up to Walton with some supplies, asked about Liz while I was there. A peaceful end, they said. Given her condition, that was a blessing, old son.’ Liz and Bernard had been inseparable. Like Darby and Joan, Laurel and Hardy, theirs had been a double act. He recalled some of the carryings-on, parties where Bernard had been foil to Liz and vice versa. The pair had prayed, played and stayed together. ‘“I can drink any table under this man,”’ said John softly. ‘Remember her saying that while in her cups, Bernard?’

  ‘Aye, she was well away that night. I think that was the first time she’d ever had vodka. Up till then, she’d called vodka a heathen drink, something to do with communism.’ Bernard dropped his chin and pondered. ‘Aye, vodka was her downfall that particular night. Our Liz did her balancing act with the yardbrush and destroyed Dr Connor’s chandelier. Austrian crystal. Cost me nigh on eighty quid to have it mended.’

  ‘We’ll not see her like again,’ said John. ‘That mould definitely got smashed.�
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  ‘Just like the bloody chandelier.’ Bernard sniffed, exhaled, watched his foggy breath as it hovered for seconds in the chill November air. ‘One off, was my Liz. She deserved some peace. What she went through was never deserved. I can’t think of anyone bad enough to warrant pain like that.’

  John thrust his hands deep into coat pockets, cursing himself for forgetting gloves again. ‘Will you bury her in Bolton, then?’

  Liz had left explicit instructions. Soon after the first operation, she had understood that she would not recover, because the voracious beast within her body had already sallied forth to sink its hungry, sharp teeth into most major organs. ‘She’s to be burnt – she didn’t mind where.’ The smile threatened again.

  ‘You can put me on a bloody bonfire like Guy Fawkes for all I care,’ Liz had said. ‘Just make sure I get scattered properly and give Katherine all my jewellery.’

  ‘Jolly Brows,’ said Bernard.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘North side of Bolton – that’s where she’s to be scattered. We used to meet there years back, before we were married. There was a little hillock with a pond nearby. In springtime, loads of baby frogs hatched out and jumped all over us.’ Unlike most girls, Liz had taken the frogs in her stride. ‘It was the frogs that clinched it at the finish, you see.’

  John Povey scratched his nose, did a mental inventory of his famous herbal remedies. What could he brew up to ward off dementia? John, who had perfected the art of sartorial eccentricity, looked every inch the mad scientist: dishevelled hair; clothes which always managed to look like someone else’s, seldom fitting, always creased. ‘Isn’t it enough that I’m daft?’ he asked his friend. ‘Do you have to catch the same bus as me? Don’t start going soft in the head, lad. Don’t start copying me.’

  ‘She liked frogs,’ continued Bernard. ‘She liked most living things. I had to make a contraption when we had a mouse, a box with cheese in it and a door that shut itself once the creature got inside. She used to waltz off up to Blundellsands to release the bloody mice into the wild, as she called it. Any infestations in Blundellsands would be Liz’s fault. I kept telling her they weren’t field mice, but you know what Liz was like. She said if the mice insisted on living indoors, they’d get a better class of cheese in Blundellsands, a bit of Brie or Danish Blue.’

  ‘She was a character, all right,’ agreed John Povey.

  Bernard nodded. Liz was a grand woman. Silently, Bernard corrected himself. She had been a grand woman, a lover of animals, a determined minder of wildlife, a protectress of all God’s creatures. She had been, but she no longer was. Everything about the woman he loved was suddenly history.

  John glanced at the Liver Building clock. ‘Did you close the shop?’

  ‘Henry’s there.’ Henry couldn’t fillet a cod to save his life. Bernard Walsh followed the direction of his friend’s gaze. ‘The largest chiming clock in existence,’ he said. Sailors from all corners knew the Liver Building, looked for its twin birds to mark the end of a journey. This, one of the most memorable buildings on earth, was often a sight for the sore eyes of a returning homesick traveller.

  ‘How long are you planning to stay here?’ John Povey asked.

  ‘In Liverpool?’

  ‘No. Here in the freezing cold.’

  At last Bernard allowed himself a fuller smile. ‘I’m thinking.’

  ‘I know that.’

  Bernard shuffled about, faced the river again. He remembered his days on Bolton’s fishmarket, the wind blowing through those huge doors, lorries emptying their contents between stalls, early shoppers trying to get the pick of the catch before the market was properly opened except to wholesale purchasers. The rabbit man tramping in with a pole of rabbits; the chicken woman covered in feathers, a couple of sacks dragging from her hands.

  He remembered the blue-misted moors, Sundays spent roaming across fields with Liz, evenings enjoyed at home with Mam and Dad. ‘There’s no going back, is there?’ He had considered the possibility of returning to Bolton once before, after the discovery in Liverpool of a certain woman, but Liz had insisted on staying. She had been dug up once, and had declared her roots now to be settled. ‘I shan’t stand for another transplant, Bernard,’ Liz Walsh had advised her husband. ‘I’m all right. I’ve got friends and I’m used to the shops. Pull me up again and I’ll perish like a dried-out bedding plant.’

  ‘I don’t know about staying, going, moving on or whatever,’ mumbled Bernard.

  John dragged reluctant hands from warm pockets and propped his elbows on the railing. ‘Do the thing that seems best, Bernard.’

  The fishmonger shifted his gaze to the left and looked at John Povey. With his over-long greying hair and intense hazel eyes, the chemist looked a bit like another Einstein. ‘I’ve always done what’s bloody best,’ said Bernard Walsh, his tone almost snappy. ‘And where did it get me? A lock-up on Scotland Road and a lie I’ve lived for twenty-odd year. There were times, you know. Times when I came near to telling Liz.’ He swallowed a lump of pain. ‘But I never did. Then, when she took poorly … Well, that’s all over for her now, thank God.’

  ‘Katherine isn’t history, though.’

  ‘I know that, John.’

  ‘She’s the future. She’s a good girl and I know she’ll take it on the chin.’

  Bernard shook his head pensively. ‘There’s things I did that I never should have done, then there’s other things I should have done that I never—’

  ‘It’s the same for all of us. Do you think you’re the only sinner, the only chap who’s ever made mistakes? You can’t change the past, but you can make an effort for the future.’

  Firstly, Bernard had to take himself back to Scotland Road, had to tell his one and only child that her mother was dead. Then there were insurance policies to wade through, people to be notified, coffins to pick and choose from. In his house, Liz’s belongings would scream at him from every corner of every room. The house had caused him pain for many a month, but now, with Liz definitely gone, her trinkets and clothes would be angrier, louder, lonelier. And time would continue to tick on, marked by the Liver clocks and by the watch on his wrist, by the hourly beep-beeps on the radio, by the ever-turning pages of the kitchen calendar.

  ‘Come on, Bernard,’ urged John.

  ‘Not yet. You go – I’ll be all right.’ He had thoughts to collect, phrases to arrange.

  ‘Are you sure?’ John Povey’s face was furrowed by concern.

  ‘I’ve never been sure of owt,’ said Bernard, lapsing deliberately into the idiom that separated him from most of his fellows in this city. ‘Except that I loved Liz and I love my daughter.’

  John Povey shuddered again, trembling not only against the chill, but also because of a secret shared for more than a decade. Who could say what was right, what was wrong? Perhaps Katherine should not be told … and yet …

  Bernard read his companion’s thoughts. ‘I shall have to work my way up to it, John. There’s none but me shall tell the tale, because I know you’ll say nothing.’

  John nodded his agreement. ‘I’ll not push you any more, Bernard. You have my opinion, but I shan’t force the issue. You know me well enough by now. I can offer pills and potions, but a cure’s never guaranteed.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Bernard watched his friend as he made his way across the Pier Head and towards his car. ‘What would I have done without that man?’ he mouthed softly. For a long time, John had been Bernard’s sanity. John Povey was a gentleman of principle, a genius with medicines, an unspoilt, down-to-earth bloke.

  A gaggle of youths came into view, shaggy haircuts resembling what Liz had always termed ‘tatty-’ead mops’, the sort that got squeezed out in a special section of a bucket. Although the Beatles had moved on, the noise continued, bang-banging from the mesh speakers of portable radios, drumming its way through open windows in the summer months, escaping from coffee bars each time a door swung to or fro. And these young lads’ heads seemed to warrant mow
ing, not cutting.

  The boys stopped as if prompted by some invisible cue, drew combs from pockets and passed them through wild, abundant locks. Guitar cases leaned against blue-jeaned legs, while the omnipresent transistor radio sat silently next to a pile of sheet music. The group would doubtless be on its way to practise in the garage or bedroom of some tolerant or absent parent. These were the hopefuls, the also-rans who tried to pursue Ringo and the rest into lives of luxury and lunacy. ‘Bloody daft,’ muttered Bernard. They should be spending their time looking for a good job. The Beatles seemed to exist on the run, escaping from mobs of screaming girls and from the constant glare of scandal-hungry reporters. Aye, they’d all have been a damned sight better off in fish.

  Katherine. She’d been to that last concert at The Cavern, had probably screeched with the rest while John Lennon played and sang in that wonderful, careless, I’m-here-to-enjoy-myself way, his head held up, notes pouring past adenoidal tissue and down a strangely aristocratic nose. Katherine had been through a few phases – pancake make-up thick enough to want scraping off by an interior decorator, white-as-death cheeks, eyes surrounded by spiky, false lashes, the upper lids painted as black as hell.

  How could he tell her? How? And must she be told?

  The chocolate workers had been sent home on that searing August day, the day of the last Cavern concert, because coffee creams and hazel fudge had melted around them in sticky, shapeless pools. In spite of the heat, Liverpool’s young folk had squeezed themselves into that awful cellar, many fainting for lack of oxygen, some losing consciousness in the presence of their gods.

  She had quietened, had attended a Catholic teacher training college in Liverpool, returning each evening to the bosom of her family. They lived in a nice big semi on the Northern Road in Crosby, had four bedrooms, a piano, a man who came round once a week to do the gardening, a lady who tidied up and cleaned the silver. They had a car, an automatic washing machine, a television set and a freezer. Carpets were top-grade Axminster; all rooms were centrally heated. And Liz was dead.