The Corner House

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘My goodness.’ It looked as if the local children would see their day with the ogress inside. He switched thoughts, returning to the unpalatable subject of Ruth McManus. ‘Doesn’t your cousin Irene work with the undertaker?’

  Jessica nodded. ‘She likes dead people. My mam said it was because Auntie Ruth always screamed at Irene and the dead ones don’t scream.’

  ‘I see.’ And he did. Lately, Ruth McManus seemed to have fallen off her rocker completely, stealing, clouting shopkeepers, getting herself sacked, evicted, written about in the Bolton Evening News. Surely such a woman would not be allowed to raise Jessica?

  ‘There she is now.’ Jessica pointed out a figure hurrying along on the other side. ‘I suppose I’d better go home, because Maggie might start. She doesn’t like Auntie Ruth.’ Jessica jumped off the wall and dusted herself down. ‘I hope you’ll be happy in New Zealand.’

  He wanted to embrace the girl who probably had his blood in her veins. Instead, he shook her hand and wished her success in all she undertook. She walked away, leaving in her wake a man she did not truly know, a man who had divided his assets with her, who had invested in her prospects.

  Inside the house, Jessica put down her library book in the hallway and entered the living room. She only had to follow the sounds to know that the two women were in the back of the building.

  ‘I’m moving in and that’s that,’ Ruth was saying.

  ‘Over my dead body,’ came the swift reply.

  ‘That can be arranged,’ spat Ruth.

  Jessica entered the room.

  ‘Tell her,’ yelled Ruth. ‘Jessica, tell this Irish witch that I’m your real auntie and that I can stay.’

  Maggie stepped between the two of them. ‘Do not use the child. I am in charge until Theresa returns and—’

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Jessica. ‘Sit down, Maggie.’

  Maggie sat.

  ‘Please go,’ Jessica begged her aunt. ‘There would be trouble if you came to live here.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry I pushed you last time, but you have to go. My mother wouldn’t want you here.’

  ‘Why?’ asked Ruth. ‘What have I done to her?’

  ‘It’s what you did to Irene,’ replied Jessica.

  Ruth planted her feet well apart and placed a hand on each hip. ‘What I did? What I bloody did? It was her dad that buggered off and left me to see to her, no money, never a penny off him for her keep. You don’t know what I’ve been through, none of you.’

  Maggie could not contain herself. ‘We do know, but. You’ve made sure that the whole of Bolton, Lancashire and probably the British Isles know what a sad life you’ve had. Why don’t you broadcast it on the BBC Home Service?’

  Ruth glowered. It seemed that her level of control was being depleted on a daily basis. She turned her back on the sender of solicitors’ letters and concentrated on Jessica. ‘You should see where I’m living, love. There’s no proper cooker, the bathroom’s shared and it’s filthy. I’ve got a job starting Monday. It’s at the Starkie, right on your doorstep. All I want is a bed and a butty for a couple of nights.’

  Maggie simmered, heated up towards boiling, but managed to keep her lid on, just about.

  ‘No,’ said Jessica quietly.

  Maggie’s heart leapt; Ruth’s jaw sagged. Maggie, prouder than ever of her young charge, recognized that Jess was developing into a woman who would stand her ground. Ruth, confused, hurt and hopeless, dropped into a chair and sobbed.

  ‘Crocodile tears,’ yawned Maggie. She’d seen plenty of those before, usually running down the faces of working girls whose lives had become a little too adventurous.

  Ruth continued to weep copiously.

  The owner of the house, a girl with too little experience in the wiles of female adults, was perplexed. Auntie Ruth, who had no money and no proper home, was in a real state. Maggie, who had the full trust of Theresa Nolan, was in charge. Jessica glanced from one to the other.

  ‘Don’t give in,’ Maggie pleaded. ‘Remember the fourteen shillings.’

  ‘And sevenpence,’ added Jessica vaguely. And the pound had not been repaid, either, the savings for a new frock had never been returned to their rightful owner. But Auntie Ruth was so sad.

  The door burst inward. Irene, who looked as if she had just been dragged through a hedge backwards, entered the room. ‘I knew it,’ she said. ‘I knew you’d be next.’ She waved a hand in Jessica’s direction. ‘I had a feeling,’ she continued, ‘so the boss gave me some more time. I went round with food for Mam, then I caught sight of her on the way to the Starkie. When she came out, I followed her. And here she is, crying and carrying on.’

  Ruth’s tears dried like a shallow summer puddle beneath a flawless sky.

  ‘Come on, Mam,’ said Irene. ‘You can’t stop here. The only way we can all manage is if you live by yourself.’

  Ruth exploded. It was an experience that would be remembered for ever by each person in the room. Firstly, she jumped up and swept everything off the table – cups, plates and cutlery which had all been laid nicely for the evening meal. Secondly, she threw herself on her daughter, raking her nails down the younger woman’s face before sending her crashing into the sideboard.

  Temporarily dazed into immobility, Maggie and Jessica watched while Ruth McManus kicked and ripped at her daughter.

  Maggie jumped up, took hold of Ruth from behind and lifted her across the room. A pair of matching vases leapt to the floor and smashed to smithereens as Irene finally hit the ground. Ruth screamed words that were filthy, the sort of language Maggie had heard during her early career on the streets. Irene got up, blood pouring from a wound near her left temple.

  Jessica, whose legs had become decidedly wobbly, sat in the nearest of the rockers. Ruth, still held in Maggie’s vice-like grip, did an imitation of a beetle turned on its back, all clawing tentacles and panic.

  ‘You should get that cut seen to,’ Maggie advised Irene.

  ‘I’ve survived a lot worse,’ replied the shaken young woman. ‘Now, you’ve seen her at her best. She’s the one who should be in hospital, in a padded cell and a straitjacket.’

  Foam appeared at the corners of Ruth McManus’s mouth. Fascinated and horrified, Jessica clung to the arms of her rocking chair. Auntie Ruth looked for all the world like an over-excited dog who was whipping himself into a lather. As if reading her mistress’s thoughts, Sheba began to bark underneath the window, her large head appearing and disappearing as she leapt up and down in the back yard.

  The sequence of events that followed became hazy, dreamlike. It was as if a film were running slowly, evenly, but at the wrong speed. Ruth went limp, slumping forward over Maggie’s joined wrists. Maggie, believing that this was a ploy to gain freedom, continued to hold onto her prisoner.

  ‘Her face has gone funny,’ said Jessica, her voice high-pitched.

  Irene put a closed fist against her own bruised mouth. ‘Bloody hell,’ she breathed. ‘Put her on the sofa – she’s having a stroke.’

  Ruth McManus was placed on the chaise. Her eyes, frantic and fear-filled, tried to focus. No sound emerged from the mouth, the lips seeming to be twisted into a rigid, crooked shape. Irene, neglecting her own injuries, dashed out of the house to seek help.

  Maggie knelt beside the prone figure under the stairs. ‘Can you hear me?’ she asked. ‘God, Jessica, run and fetch a damp flannel. Ruth? Can you hear me?’

  Jessica returned with the cloth and watched while Maggie wiped her aunt’s face. Ruth looked terribly old, terribly white. Irene leapt back into the room, Roy Chorlton hot on her heels. ‘The doctor from next to the library’s on his way,’ he said.

  Maggie looked up, saw a man who should not have been there, felt glad that he was there. ‘What’ll I do?’ she asked him.

  ‘Loosen her clothes, stand back and give her air.’

  Maggie unfastened Ruth’s cardigan and blouse, then drifted to the other side of the room.

  Roy checked the breathing, felt
the pulse. The woman was hanging on, but the heartbeat was weak and erratic. He patted the patient’s hand. ‘Good girl,’ he told her. ‘Keep calm and you’ll be fine.’

  After what seemed like hours, the doctor arrived. He had sent for an ambulance after Irene’s description of the symptoms. ‘Did she fall heavily?’ He nodded in the direction of shattered cutlery.

  ‘No,’ answered Irene. ‘But I did after she attacked me.’

  Jessica stared at her cousin. There was no grief in her voice, no pain, no sorrow. Irene did not care, it seemed. Irene was so calm, so nerveless.

  The doctor hovered over his patient like a black bird of prey, as if waiting for the moment when he could fall upon a newly deceased animal. Jessica, suddenly missing her mother more acutely than ever, blinked back the tears. Maggie fingered a rosary in her apron pocket, repeating in her mind words of ancient prayers, pleas she had learned at her mother’s knee almost half a century ago. Roy stood well back, in the kitchen doorway, observing the grief in his daughter’s face. His arms ached to comfort her. With Betteridge and Hardman both dead, the identity of the original seed no longer mattered – Jessica was his. Irene picked up bits of pottery and placed them on the sideboard. Her wounds had stopped bleeding, but her cheeks were streaked with blood, as was her right temple.

  The doctor glanced at Irene. ‘I’ll see to your injuries later,’ he said.

  She shrugged. ‘I’ll look after myself,’ was her reply. ‘I’ve been doing it all my life.’

  Maggie stopped in the middle of a Hail Mary. There was a glint in Irene’s eye, an expression that was not a total stranger to triumph. What was this young woman thinking? A shiver ran the length of Maggie’s spine, a frozen finger trickling downward from the neck and touching every vertebra in its path. Evil was visiting the room. Evil had arrived in the form of Ruth McManus, but Irene had delivered something else into the climate, an element that had magnified and solidified the earlier atmosphere.

  The Irishwoman inhaled, suddenly aware that she had been holding her breath. She remembered Theresa back in Liverpool, poor Theresa who had planned revenge, who had seemed to live simply to pay back those who had hurt her. Theresa Nolan’s anger had been nothing, a pale shadow of real, malicious hatred. Hatred was here, now, in this house. It crackled in the air, bounced off walls, embedded itself in the woman on the sofa, travelled back to the patient’s daughter, magnified itself, returned to Ruth McManus.

  Maggie blessed herself, brushed past Roy, went into the kitchen where she retched violently until her stomach was empty.

  A hand touched her shoulder. ‘Are you all right?’ asked Roy Chorlton.

  ‘You know,’ she said between gasps, ‘we are looking at the edge of madness. God help us all.’

  EIGHTEEN

  Christmas loomed again, its proximity advertised by chill winds and small flurries of snow that failed to settle.

  On the walls of Jessica’s huge attic bedroom, postcards from Switzerland punctuated buttermilk-painted walls, while photographs of Mam stood on a chest of drawers. Dr Blake had never been home. He was working in Europe, was moving from one TB hospital to another while writing a book on the various treatments available to sufferers of the disease.

  Although Mam’s letters were always full of fun and promise, there was no mention of a date when she might come home. Jessica had a tendency to read between lines, and was reaching the conclusion that Theresa would never return. Being twelve-going-on-thirteen was a bind, too, because Jessica could not obtain a passport without the permission of parent or guardian. Who would help her visit her mother? No-one. So she had to sit and write falsely cheerful letters in response to similar messages.

  She immersed herself in school work, gaining high marks in subjects she loved, mere passes in areas which did not interest her. Apart from Latin, geography was the worst. She stared for endless hours at lists of capitals, tried to remember the outlines of countries too far away to be accessible, places she would never consider visiting in a million years. What was the population of Calcutta? Who cared? Only the folk who lived in India might need an answer to that one.

  Although her mother remained absent, Jessica was well cared for. There was Maggie, who kept house and earned money by cleaning, then Eva and Jimmy, who always welcomed Jessica into their View Street home. Schoolfriends had an open invitation to Tonge Moor Road, many staying at weekends and during holidays, most envying Jessica her parentless state, because Maggie was such a card. She sang for them, danced for them, gambled with them. Many a shilling’s worth of copper was lost or gained on Friday nights in front of a blazing fire where toast incinerated itself on the end of a forgotten fork, where Maggie’s scones baked in the bungalow range oven.

  On an unusually friendless Friday, Jessica sat on her bed surrounded by shoe boxes. She reread her mother’s letters, arranging them in order and packaging them into ribbon-tied bundles. On a wicker chair, the dog snored in spite of hailstones battering the windows. Jessica looked into the fire, an interesting construction which sat right in the centre of her floor. It was simply a hole in the chimney, a grate that could be viewed from either side of the room. It was romantic, Jessica thought, to be able to curl up and look through the fire. She imagined that lovers would like to sit here and watch flames dancing in the middle of a room. Mind, romance would soon fly out of the window for whoever had to cart the coal up two flights of stairs.

  Maggie was coming. Jessica could hear the heavy treads on the narrow, steep staircase that led to the attic.

  The door bounced inward. ‘We’ll be needing a lift,’ breathed Maggie. ‘I’m all of a fluster.’ She threw herself onto the spare bed. ‘And I wish we’d never had that telephone plumbed in.’

  Jessica grinned. Plumbed in?

  ‘I’ve had a phone call.’

  Jessica had gathered that much already.

  ‘From Monty. He thinks the Liverpool Mafia has an eye on him. Even though his nephew’s up high in the police, he still fears for his safety.’ She studied Jessica for a second. ‘You don’t need to know the details, just that Monty’s a good man.’

  Jessica noticed a glow in Maggie’s cheeks. ‘Are you blushing?’

  ‘Indeed and I am not,’ snapped the Irishwoman.

  ‘You are.’

  The older woman tutted her impatience. ‘What-ever, Monty’s coming. I said he could stay in your mother’s room for now. Do you mind?’

  Jessica giggled. She did mind in a way, wanting to keep the room as it was for her mother’s return, but Monty was lovely and Maggie needed company her own age. ‘Maggie and Monty,’ she pondered aloud. ‘You sound like a pair already.’

  For answer, Maggie threw a pillow across the room.

  ‘He probably wants to marry you,’ said Jessica loftily. ‘Although I can’t imagine why.’ Another pillow hit her full in the face.

  ‘I am not the marrying kind.’

  ‘And I won’t be a bridesmaid to a person who throws things at me.’ Jessica stood up. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get Mam’s room aired.’

  They went down to the first floor, stripped the bed, switched on a little two-bar electric fire. ‘Maggie?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Will Mam ever come home?’

  Sighing, Maggie sank onto Theresa’s newly undressed bed. ‘TB’s a terrible, troublesome thing, Jess. It comes and it goes, or it comes and it stays. Put the business this way, pet, if Stephen Blake can do anything at all to make your mammy well, then he will. Isn’t he among all those specialist fellows? Well now, between the lot of them, they’ve got to come up with some ideas. She’s in the best place, all mountains and lakes, beautiful fresh air and the loveliest food.’

  Jessica sniffed. ‘Can’t I go and visit her?’

  ‘We’ll see.’

  We’ll see. It was always ‘we’ll see’ and ‘be patient’ and ‘don’t worry’. It wasn’t good enough. Sometimes, Jessica got really angry with people. She was young, but she knew about life and illnes
s and misfortune. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

  Maggie groaned. How many more times was she going to be accused of withholding information? She, too, had had enough. ‘Jessica,’ she began, barely held patience etched deep into the syllables. ‘I love you more than anyone on God’s good earth. I never had children, so you’ve got all the love I have. On your life, I tell you now that I don’t hold anything back from you. On your life, not mine.’

  Jessica swallowed. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Ah, it’s no matter. But.’

  ‘But what?’

  ‘If you carry on in front of Monty about him and me being an article, you’ll suffer. It’ll be porridge and peas. You know how much you love porridge and peas.’

  Jessica giggled. ‘Can’t I even ask him if he likes you a little, tiny bit?’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Can’t I just—’ A pillow flew past Jessica’s head. ‘But I was only—’

  ‘Shut up.’

  Jessica uttered not one more word.

  Irene opened the door, allowing Maggie and Jessica to enter before following them up the hallway. It was a pretty little semi with two small living rooms and a kitchen downstairs. The front room had been given completely to Ruth McManus. Disabled by her stroke, the woman lay in a narrow bed near the window. A fire danced merrily in the grate, the flames looking incongruous in the sad, dark room. Next to the bed, a small table supported a spouted cup, a spittoon and the remains of a mashed-up dinner. There was no ashtray. It appeared that Irene fed her mother and gave her drinks, but she had obviously drawn the line at holding a cigarette to those narrow, wordless lips.

  Jessica sat in one of the two upright chairs, Maggie in its twin. The only other seat in the room was a commode, a wooden item bought second-hand in a Bolton junk shop. Beneath the hinged lid was Ruth’s toilet onto which she had to be helped by her daughter.

  ‘How are you today?’ asked Maggie, her tone made higher by false geniality. ‘You look a bit brighter.’

  The woman who ‘looked a bit brighter’ tried to speak. The resulting sound was guttural and incomprehensible.