Jessica fiddled with her gloves. In the hall, three parcels containing Christmas gifts had been placed on a bookcase. There was a tie for Albert, a purse for Irene and a bed-jacket for Ruth.
Irene came back. ‘I’ve made a brew. Would you like to come through? Albert’s working, so it’s just the three of us. Come on,’ she insisted. ‘The back room’s much nicer than this.’
It certainly was. Red carpet, dark grey suite and floral curtains, pleasant pictures on the walls. A gate-legged table had been opened and set with crockery, cutlery, cakes and biscuits. ‘What a pretty room,’ exclaimed Jessica.
‘It gets the sun in spring and summer,’ replied Irene. ‘And there’s French windows leading out to the lawn.’ Except for the accent, she might have been a middle-class lady describing her middle-class life.
Maggie sat, accepted tea and a fruited bun spread with best butter. ‘Is your husband doing two jobs?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Irene bit through a cake and gulped it down, grabbed for another.
The woman had been starved, Maggie reminded herself. In childhood, Irene had been deprived of love, of food, of attention. To compensate, she had married a man she could control, had made a pleasant home for herself, was stuffing food into her mouth at a rate that would result in obesity at some stage. She was dedicating her whole life to the care of her mother, had lost status and income to mind her sick parent. Food was both consolation and compensation.
Jessica gazed round the room, noted the huge difference between this and the dark space in which her aunt lay. There were no pictures in Auntie Ruth’s room, and the floor was covered in brown lino. It was as if the two places were in separate houses, one new and clean, the other old-fashioned and neglected. She bit into a slice of fruit cake and kept her thoughts to herself.
‘Do you bring your mother in here ever?’ asked Maggie.
Irene swallowed another large lump of food. ‘No,’ she replied.
‘It might cheer her up a bit,’ suggested Maggie.
Irene shook her head. ‘For one, she stinks and for another, she doesn’t notice where she is.’
‘I think she does,’ said the older visitor.
Irene eyed Maggie. She did not brook contradiction, especially from a guest who was eating her food. ‘I know what she needs. I’ve looked after her ever since she came out of hospital, even gave both my jobs up. It makes no difference where she is.’
‘She can see and hear,’ insisted Maggie.
Irene simply stared at her guest.
Maggie shivered and asked for another cup of tea.
While pouring, Irene kept her eyes fixed on the Irishwoman’s face.
Jessica, aware of the tension, pointed to a photograph on the mantelpiece. ‘Is that my grandad?’
‘Yes,’ answered Irene. ‘He were a bad bugger and all, but he couldn’t hold a candle to my mam.’
Maggie felt sick. She had heard the tales of this young woman’s journey into adulthood, remembered Eva’s words as clear as day. ‘She told one man that his wife was going with the window cleaner, then she told the wife a story about the husband sleeping with another neighbour. The street was practically in flames. As for Irene – she went with anybody and everybody …’ Irene was grabbing at love, love in the shape of food, a new house, in the form of any man who would lie down with her.
Irene stuffed another small cake into her mouth. Her face, never handsome, was gathering a layer of lard over poor bone structure, making her moonlike appearance even more expressionless. She never smiled, seldom frowned, had few lines on her skin. Maggie lowered her gaze and looked at plates almost emptied by her hostess. The grim harvest reaped at the end of Irene’s childhood was clearly illustrated by her behaviour this evening. ‘Irene, if you ever need help with your mammy, I’ll come.’
‘That’s very nice of you,’ replied Irene. ‘But I like to look after her myself. It’s very satisfying.’
Maggie’s spine went cold. She lifted her head and looked into eyes as empty as green glass marbles. This young lady had already paid for her mother’s funeral. For years, Eva Coates had ruminated on what would happen when Ruth’s body finally fell into the open arms of her daughter. ‘Maggie,’ Eva had been wont to say. ‘That Irene’s waited for ever to tell her mam where to go. I’d not want to be a witness when Ruth gets carried in at the back of that undertaker’s.’
Irene’s hands were steady as they gathered up plates.
‘Shall I wash those for you?’ asked Jessica, needing something to occupy her.
‘He’ll do them when he comes in.’
Maggie closed her mouth with a determined snap, told herself to lock her tongue away. The man was doing two jobs, was working like a veritable Trojan, yet this little madam had him right under her thumb. So the abuse continued, was passed along the generations like a tightly wrapped parcel whose outer layers thickened and increased with time. Would it ever unravel, would it ever finish?
The Irishwoman cleared her throat. ‘Irene, she needs … she needs things around her, sounds, colours, anything that would stimulate her—’
‘We all need things. I never got nothing off her, not even dinners.’
‘So, it’s your turn now.’ Maggie recalled Theresa’s account of her famous showdown at Chorlton’s Fine Tailoring, a naked man in a chilly back yard, a pearl-handled pistol, a need for control, for equality. Hadn’t Theresa Nolan said those very words to Roy Chorlton? Hadn’t Theresa said, ‘It’s my turn’? And now, it was Irene’s turn to wreak a vengeance whose taste must have been far from sweet.
‘Exactly,’ replied Irene. ‘If we wait, we all get our turn.’
Maggie shivered again. The woman in the next room was not dead. She was worse than dead. A living corpse with no chance of managing the simplest bodily function, Ruth McManus existed in a dark brown world where she could hear, where she could see, where she could not express herself. Irene’s dream had come better than true, because she tended her mother’s corpse daily, spoke words of hatred and knew that her victim’s chances of responding were negligible. How paltry Theresa’s stab at justice appeared now, in the face of true obsession and real madness.
Jessica cleared her throat. ‘I’ll go and see Auntie Ruth again,’ she said.
‘Please yourself.’ Irene shrugged. ‘You’d be as well off talking to the wall.’
Maggie followed her charge into the other room. She sniffed the air, found the smells of sickness lurking beneath a liberal spraying of perfume. ‘Find the bathroom,’ she told Jessica. ‘And a nice flannel and a towel. I’ll just wipe the poor sick one’s face.’ Maggie waited until Jessica had left the room, then she pulled back the bed covers. These were tucked in tightly, but the Irishwoman persevered until what was left of Ruth McManus displayed itself.
Gagging heavily, Maggie staggered back.
Ruth’s lips twisted, tried to mould a sound. ‘Rat,’ she managed.
The stench of gangrene had sent Maggie spinning towards the door, but she gritted her teeth and returned to the bedside. Ruth’s body was filthy. The source of the worst smell was not visible, as it probably came from unwashed and untreated bedsores on Ruth’s back. A greyish undersheet had not been changed in days, possibly in weeks. Streaks of dried faeces had impregnated the flannelette, mingling with patches of urine and food. ‘You’ve some pain, girl,’ said Maggie. Blood supplies to Ruth’s back had probably been cut off, mostly because she had never been turned. The odour of dead flesh must have been emanating from that source for weeks, at least. There was not the slightest doubt in Maggie’s mind – this was severe, criminal neglect.
Jessica and Irene entered the room simultaneously. Maggie swung round and faced Ruth’s tormentor. ‘Take those things back upstairs,’ Maggie told Jessica. ‘I shan’t be needing them.’
Irene hovered in the doorway, her face as flat and unresponsive as ever. ‘Do you want another cup of tea?’
This, decided Maggie, was insanity at its peak, evil at its worst. Yes, Irene had
been ill treated as a child, but no human being in God’s world should be in Ruth McManus’s current state.
‘I told you she stinks,’ said Irene. ‘They do after a while. You can keep them too long, you know.’
‘Does a nurse come in, ever?’ Maggie fought to keep her tone level.
‘She doesn’t like anybody near her except me.’
You can keep them too long. It was clear that Irene fed her mother, yet she treated her like any of the other corpses she had handled over the years, saw Ruth as something dead, yet alive. Maggie felt a trembling deep in her bones, as if she had become the sudden victim of some neurological disorder. She didn’t know what to do. If she left Ruth in this state, she would be doing less than her humanitarian duty. But, if she took on Irene, the outcome might be terrible, especially with Jessica in the house. ‘Ah well,’ she said after a few seconds’ thought, ‘you can only do your best, Irene, no more and no less.’
Maggie and Jessica bundled themselves into coats, scarves and gloves, bade their hostess goodbye, then went to wait for a bus.
When the vehicle reached Tonge Moor Library, Maggie told Jessica to get off. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she said. ‘Go in the house, close the door and don’t let anyone in unless it’s Monty. You never know when he’ll turn up.’
With her mind set on her immediate goal, Maggie Courtney carried on into town. It was time to get the police.
* * *
Maggie held onto Monty’s arm. It was Christmas Eve and she should have been elsewhere, should have been with Jessica. Jimmy and Eva were staying for the holidays, would be sleeping in Jessica’s attic while Jessica slept downstairs on one of the sofas. Monty had Theresa’s room, and Maggie thanked the Lord for Monty’s presence. Without him, she would have felt a sight worse.
They walked away from the bus stop, through a pair of heavy iron gates set into tremendously high walls. This was where the ill people lived, those poor, often forgotten souls who had been badly treated by life, folk who simply didn’t have the strength of mind or the power of soul to cope with a world that could be forever cruel.
‘Come on, girl,’ chided Monty. ‘We don’t want to be here till Easter, do we?’
Maggie smiled at him. He was taller, straighter and younger than before. Since the trial, Monty had pulled himself together, had become proud of his achievement in helping to close down a business whose roots lay in man’s need for filthy behaviour and filthier lucre.
A porter stopped them at the main door and asked to see their pass. ‘Ward Seven,’ he advised them. ‘Doors will be locked and you’ll have to knock.’
It was grim. The corridor, painted a heavy cream above the dado and a sad green beneath, led Monty and Maggie past several doors, each bearing a number. When they reached 7, they paused, drawing breath in unison before Monty raised a fist. The door opened and a cheerful nurse grinned at them. ‘Going to break my nose, are you?’
For answer, Maggie gave her the pass and a covering letter.
The young, fresh-faced woman sobered. ‘So you’ve come to see our Irene, have you?’
Maggie nodded. ‘How is she?’
The nurse shook her head. ‘Well, she’s eating. She’s eaten everything except her bed so far. And she’s so … so calm.’
‘Especially for someone who killed her mother,’ concluded Monty softly.
Maggie staggered against the door-jamb. ‘I should have stayed. But I thought if I faced her out with Jessica there, it might have got unpleasant.’
‘You did what was right at the time,’ said the staff nurse. ‘This was an incident just waiting to happen. But the doctors can’t work out whether she’s fit to stand trial. On the one hand, she was treating her mother like another corpse, but on the other, she fed her and finally killed her. Yet she’s so rational. Ask her anything about anything and she’ll give you a perfectly acceptable answer. Ask her about her mother and her childhood, and she glazes over.’
Maggie nodded. ‘There’s a woman called Eva Coates – she’s staying with us at the moment. Eva has lived almost next door to Ruth and Irene since Irene was born. She knows more than I do, so ask her. But I suppose only the doctors can decide whether or not Irene can be prosecuted as a sane person. Myself, I have doubts.’
The nurse drew Maggie and Monty into the ward. It was not an open ward. It was another corridor, narrower than the outer one, with doors along each side. ‘The cells are padded,’ said the nurse. ‘And I must warn you that everything you say will be overheard by a doctor. Are you willing to visit in view of that?’
‘Yes,’ replied Maggie immediately. ‘Whatever it takes, she must be treated fairly.’
Irene’s room was empty except for a bed on the edge of which she was perched, a magazine in her hand. Monty stood with his back to the handleless door, an item that was upholstered as thickly as the walls. Although he knew that the nurse was right outside, he felt claustrophobic and found himself pulling at his collar.
Irene looked up. ‘You get used to it,’ she advised him.
Maggie sat next to the patient. ‘Are they treating you well?’
The younger woman lifted a shoulder. ‘Food’s all right, I suppose, but there’s never enough. They let me read books.’ She paused, chewing thoughtfully on her lower lip. ‘I never had books. Nowt to read, no toys, no food.’ She was silent again for a second or two. ‘How’s my mam?’
Maggie sighed heavily. ‘Dead, love. She died three nights ago. You were with her.’
Irene nodded. ‘I laid her out. I washed her. I paid for her funeral, saved up for years.’
The Irishwoman closed her eyes, caught the scent of death in her nostrils, remembered the dirt, the panic in Ruth McManus’s eyes. ‘Irene, you killed her,’ she said clearly for the benefit of whoever was listening. ‘When Jessica and I left, you put a pillow over Ruth’s face until she stopped breathing. You had been feeding her, but she was not clean.’
Irene turned her head slowly and stared dispassionately at Maggie Courtney. ‘Oh no,’ she stated. ‘I’m the murdered one. My mother killed me years ago. I still walk about, but I’m dead.’
‘Dead?’ Maggie’s voice, squashed by a drying throat, had raised itself in pitch.
Irene nodded. ‘That was why I worked with them. I understood them and they understood me.’
Maggie allowed a few beats of time to pass. ‘You killed Ruth, Irene. You took a pillow and pressed it on her face until she stopped breathing. She had been neglected so badly that her bedsores had gone gangrenous.’
‘I washed her.’ The tone was not defensive. ‘Like I washed all the others.’
Maggie took hold of Irene’s plump, flaccid hand, felt no response, no resistance. ‘She wasn’t like the others. Ruth was alive. You made her dinners, you fed her.’
‘Yes. I was good to her.’ She pulled her hand away and turned a page of her Woman’s Weekly. ‘You can go now,’ she said. ‘I want to finish reading this.’
Back in the company of the plump young nurse, Maggie wept quietly for a few minutes. ‘She’s as cracked as an old cup,’ she managed finally.
‘Yes,’ answered the nurse. ‘That’s what we all thought.’
In a bed in Crosby, Liverpool, a young girl twisted about until the covers were in knots. The dream was weird, all shapes and swirls, a mountain, birdsong and a woman in white. The lady had shoulder-length hair in a pale blond colour with a tiny hint of red. She stood on a balcony and laughed as if watching a comedy act in an outdoor theatre.
The man with her was a blur, darkish hair, darkish clothes and a booming laugh. ‘Jessica,’ the lady said, a hand outstretched in Katherine’s direction.
‘I’m not Jessica,’ replied a very young child. The teacher came and dragged Katherine away. ‘You should stay in your chair,’ said Miss Brown, an expert in being cross.
Katherine, who was six again, kicked the angry teacher.
‘I’m going home,’ called the lady on the balcony. She floated heavenward, arms outstretched li
ke the steady wings of a great wandering albatross. The man followed her, a giant bat outlined against an ice-blue sky.
Katherine sat up in bed, her mind clinging to the frayed edge of a dream that refused to knit together again. At least she was almost thirteen once more, not a victim of one of Miss Brown’s tantrums. The other woman’s hair – she had seen it before, but she could not remember where or when. The lady on the balcony had shouted a name, the name of a girl who lived on a farm. It didn’t matter. Dreams came, dreams went, but today was Christmas. And anyway, men and women could not fly.
Katherine Walsh straightened her bed and lay down again. As sleep reclaimed her, a very silly thought skittered across her mind. Was it possible, she wondered, to have someone else’s dream by mistake?
Jessica woke with a start. There was something different about today, something special. She was downstairs, but she had been sleeping on the ground floor ever since the arrival of Jimmy and Eva, so there was nothing new in that. She yawned, and remembered. It was Christmas Day. No. Well, yes, it was Christmas, but that wasn’t the really special bit. What else was special about today? she wondered idly.
She turned over and faced the back of the chaise. There had been a dream, only she could not recall any of it. Closing her eyes, she courted sleep, but it drifted away from her on a draught of sage and onion accompanied by the clatter of utensils.
‘Sorry,’ said Maggie, emerging from the kitchen. ‘Still, it’s just as well that you’re awake, because I want to use the range as well. Electric is all right, but I’d sooner have my coal oven any day of the week. Anyway, happy Christmas and would you like a cup of tea?’
Jessica nodded, sat up and rubbed the remnants of night from her eyes. Sheba barked, licked her mistress’s face, then lay down again on the rug. ‘Happy Christmas, but it doesn’t seem right,’ Jessica told Maggie. ‘Having Christmas while Irene’s in hospital and Auntie Ruth’s dead.’
‘Life goes on.’ Maggie grappled with a string of sausages that seemed to have a will of its own. ‘These English sausages aren’t up to much,’ she grumbled.
The Corner House Page 45