The House By Princes Park

by Maureen Lee

  It seemed to Ruby that, as the years took her further and further away from Tom O’Hagan, the more clearly Olivia remembered him. His face she described in specific detail, and she could repeat the conversations they had word for word. She was only now recalling long forgotten things, such as railway lines glinting, ‘like silver wire in the moonlight’, the strange smell – ‘it was just the other day I realised what it was, a mixture of night flowers and burnt flesh’.

  When she came, Olivia asked if they could go into the garden. The day wasn’t particularly warm, a weak sun appeared occasionally from behind pearly grey clouds. They sat in deck chairs under the trees that were just beginning to turn gold, Olivia a melancholy figure in her pale, linen suit and large framed hat, smoking the inevitable cigarette.

  ‘I’ve brought you something,’ she said in a whispery voice that Ruby could hardly hear. She seemed tired today, washed out. ‘It’s in my bag in the house.’

  ‘Oh, what?’ Ruby tried to sound enthusiastic. She was unable to describe exactly how she felt about her mother’s visits; a mixture of resentment, embarrassment, and guilt – mostly guilt. She didn’t doubt that Olivia would prefer to have found a far more loving daughter than herself.

  ‘It’s a matinée jacket, the only item of baby clothes I kept. I didn’t even buy it, Madge did, but I thought you’d like to have it as a memento.’

  ‘I’ll treasure it for ever.’

  The colourless lips twisted in a smile. ‘My dear Ruby, you try so hard, but you’re not a good enough actress to deceive. You find me a pain, don’t you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ Ruby protested.

  ‘Yes, you do, dear. Not that I blame you. It was selfish of me to come bursting into your life nearly forty years too late, but once I’d discovered where you lived, I had to get to know Tom’s daughter.’ She looked curiously at Ruby. ‘Don’t you ever wonder how your life would have gone if he hadn’t been killed?’

  Ruby shook her head. ‘It seems a waste of time.’

  ‘I’ve wasted an awful lot of time thinking about what might have been,’ Olivia said with a sigh. ‘I wish I were strong like you.’

  ‘It’s not a question of being strong.’ The circumstances of her birth had been entirely beyond her control. It was pointless trying to imagine how it would be had things gone differently. ‘It would have been nice, living in America, being part of a big family,’ she said, hoping this would please Olivia.

  ‘It would have been more than nice. It would have been perfect. I used to think of contacting Tom’s family, even going to see them. She smiled thinly. ‘I was too nervous, though. I would have felt like an intruder. Then I met my husband and by the time he died it was too late.’

  ‘Would you like more tea?’

  ‘I’d love some, dear.’

  ‘I won’t be a minute.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll ever get married again?’ Olivia enquired when Ruby returned.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s something else I don’t think about. I’ve got my hands full as it is.’

  ‘I’d like to see you settled before...’ she broke off. ‘It’s a pity that Chris turned out to be such a fool.’

  ‘A fool?’ Chris Ryan had always seemed eminently sensible.

  ‘Fancy giving you up for loving your girls too much! Did he expect to have taken their place in your heart?’ She angrily flicked the ash off her cigarette. ‘What conceit some men have. Have you heard from him since?’

  ‘I’ve seen him lots of times – he’s Ellie White’s brother. We’ve talked a bit, but never about anything intimate. He’s getting married soon, but I haven’t met the woman.’

  ‘What about that Matthew I seem to meet whenever I come to your house?’

  Ruby laughed. ‘Why are you so anxious to see me married?’

  ‘I told you, I’d like to see you settled. Matthew seems very nice. He’s also very rich, so I’ve been given to understand.’

  ‘Until recently, he was also very married. Now he’s divorced and he sometimes asks me out, but I always refuse.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t like him,’ Ruby said simply. ‘We shared some of our past and I’m the only one he can talk to about it. That’s why he comes. Now he seems to regard us as his substitute family.’

  ‘It’s not always possible to escape the past,’ Olivia murmured.

  ‘Anyway, Matthew’s got a girlfriend, so I’m afraid, Olivia, there’s no sign of a husband on the horizon at the moment. I’m not exactly worried.’

  Olivia looked pleased, she always did when Ruby used her name. She crushed a cigarette beneath her heel and lit another. ‘Tell me about your husband. You hardly ever talk about him.’

  ‘Jacob? There’s nothing much to tell.’ Ruby racked her brains for things to say about Jacob without revealing what a disaster it had been. She described meeting Jacob on Humble’s Farm, invented their wedding, smartened up Foster Court so it sounded quite respectable, avoided her cleaning career – Olivia already knew she’d been the pawnshop runner. After she’d finished, Olivia asked about the convent, about Emily, then Beth.

  ‘She seemed so nice, Beth. It’s a pity she went away.’

  ‘It certainly is.’ Ruby’s voice was hoarse with answering so many questions. She’d been talking for hours. They’d spoken about the same things, the same people, before, but today Olivia wanted to know every trivial little detail. ‘I have to collect the children from school soon. Would you like to come with me?’

  ‘No, thank you. I’ll just sit here till you come back. I’m rather tired.’ There were dark circles under her eyes and her cheeks were hollow. ‘That’s a pretty dress, dear. I meant to say before,’ she commented when Ruby stood up.

  ‘I bought it the day the twins had their sixth birthday party. I left the girls to get on with it and went shopping by myself. It was such a treat. I’d almost forgotten what town looked like.’ For years, her life had been confined to a small patch of Liverpool; the park, the school, the shops in Ullet Road. ‘I might do it more often.’

  ‘It’s about time you spread your wings a bit. You suit that colour.’

  The dress was wine corduroy, very fine, with a cowl neck and short sleeves. ‘Emily used to say I had terrible taste in clothes.’

  ‘Emily didn’t know what she was talking about.’

  When Ruby returned from school with her granddaughters, three large, beautifully dressed dolls were perched on chairs around the kitchen table and Olivia was making a pot of tea.

  ‘In order to avoid an argument, they’re identical,’ she said. ‘Sorry I couldn’t get them here in time for your birthday, girls. As you can see, I got one for Daisy too.’

  The children fell upon the dolls with screams of delight. ‘Why does Daisy get presents on our birthday, but we get none on hers?’ Ellie wanted to know.

  ‘So she won’t feel left out,’ said Ruby.

  ‘What if me and Moira feel left out?’

  ‘Do you?’

  Ellie considered the question earnestly. ‘No.’

  ‘Well, there’s your answer. Have you all thanked Olivia for the lovely present?’

  ‘Thank you, Olivia,’ they chorused. They hadn’t seen enough of the woman who was their great-grandmother to grow fond of her, but were always pleased when she came, as were Greta and Heather who’d been told she was a ‘friend from the past’, someone Ruby had known when she’d lived in Brambles with Emily.

  Olivia went with the children into the living room while Ruby made the tea and wondered why she hadn’t gone by now – she rarely stayed more than a couple of hours. It was a long drive to Bath and she’d already said she was tired.

  This was Ruby’s busiest time. The children ate and returned to watch television and Olivia stayed in the kitchen and chain-smoked while her daughter prepared another meal.

  ‘Are you sure you won’t have anything?’ Ruby asked.

  ‘No, dear. I’m not at all hungry, though I wouldn’t mind another cup of
tea. I’ll just wait and say hello to Greta and Heather, then I’ll go.’ She glanced at the heap of potatoes Ruby was peeling. ‘What a brick you are, doing this every night of the week.’

  ‘Except Sundays, when the students feed themselves and the girls do the cooking. During the war, I often made meals for a dozen people, sometimes more.’

  ‘I helped the Red Cross in the last war, just dressing wounds, that sort of thing. Although I was qualified, I hadn’t nursed for more than fifteen years.’

  Ruby paused, a potato in one hand, the peeler in another. ‘I’d be a hopeless nurse. I’d get impatient with people if they didn’t get better.’

  ‘You didn’t get impatient with Greta when she was ill.’

  ‘No, but she’s family. I’m wonderful with family, horrible with everyone else.’

  ‘Thank goodness I’m family,’ Olivia gave one of her rare rusty laughs. ‘Not that I think what you said is true. I’m sure you’re not horrible to the students or the people you fed during the war.’

  ‘Not openly, but I feel horrible inside.’

  They smiled at each other, and Ruby thought it was rather nice to have her mother sitting companiably by the table while she worked. For the first time, she felt stirrings of what might turn into a relationship. ‘You must come again soon,’ she said.

  Perhaps her mother sensed it too but, if so, why did she look so sad? ‘I’ll come as soon as I can,’ Olivia said.

  Beth rang on Christmas Day to say she’d become a grandmother and felt very odd.

  ‘You’ll soon get used to it,’ Ruby assured her. ‘What time is it there?’

  ‘Eight o’clock. I’m not long up. It’s a beautiful day.’

  ‘We’re just about to have our tea – the Donovans and the Whites are here. It’s already pitch dark, freezing cold, and snowing.’

  ‘It sounds mad, but I’d sooner be in Liverpool right now, particularly if it’s snowing.’

  ‘I’d sooner you were too, Beth.’

  ‘Ah, well,’ Beth sighed. ‘Have you had a nice day so far?’

  ‘Lovely. The children are over the moon with their presents.’ Matthew had bought them a toy typewriter each and she’d felt obliged to invite him to dinner.

  ‘We’ve come through, haven’t we, Rube?’

  ‘We have that, Beth. Merry Christmas.’

  ‘And a Merry Christmas to you.’

  It was four days after Christmas. Greta and Heather had returned to work and the children were playing snowballs in the garden. Ruby was making another batch of mince pies, everybody’s favourite, when the telephone rang.

  ‘Hello. Oh! Now there’s pastry stuck to the damn thing.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ It was a woman at the other end, well-spoken, with a nothing sort of voice, expressionless.

  ‘Sorry, it’s just that I’m baking and I forgot to wipe my hands. Hello, again.’

  ‘Is that Mrs O’Hagan?’

  ‘Speaking.’

  ‘We found a note on mother’s pad to ring you if something happened. I’m sorry to say she died on Christmas morning.’

  ‘Who is this? I’m afraid I don’t understand.’

  ‘I’m Irene Clark. My mother’s Olivia Appleby. She’s never mentioned you before. There was just this note on her pad...’ The voice trailed away.

  ‘Olivia’s dead?’ Ruby gasped incredulously.

  ‘Were you a friend?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it can’t have come as a surprise. She’s known for months she was dying. All those cigarettes! Eighty a day for years. When did you last see her?’

  ‘September.’

  ‘Then you must have been one of her last visitors.’

  ‘Actually, she came to see me.’

  ‘How incredible. Where are you, by the way? Yours isn’t a local number.’

  ‘Liverpool.’

  ‘Liverpool! Mother came all the way to Liverpool in September! Are you sure you’re not confusing this year with last?’

  ‘Perhaps I am,’ Ruby couldn’t be bothered arguing. She disliked the woman’s dull, deadpan voice. She didn’t sound the least upset that her mother had just died.

  ‘Oh, well. I’ve let you know as she requested. The funeral’s Monday if you want to come.’

  ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. I’m very sorry to hear about your mother. Thank you for ringing.’ Ruby replaced the receiver and went back into the kitchen where she ferociously kneaded the pastry, then pounded it just as ferociously with the rolling pin. Too late – such thoughts always came too late – she realised she’d wasted the opportunity of getting to know her mother. Poor Olivia, with her sad, sweet smile, who’d lost her lover, then had her newborn baby snatched from her arms. Why wasn’t I nicer, more friendly, more loving? Ruby asked herself in an agony of remorse, then chided herself for being a hypocrite. She’d had every opportunity of doing all those things, but she hadn’t, and it was no use crying over spilt milk. Except she was. She wiped the tears away with the back of her floury hand and wondered if she should ring Olivia’s house in case Irene Clark was there and apologise for being so unsympathetic. Fancy assuming the woman wasn’t upset because she had a deadpan voice! Maybe her voice was like that because she was upset.

  ‘Oh, what a horrible person I am!’ Ruby wailed aloud. ‘And I don’t get better as I get older.’

  The children came pouring in from the garden, mittens soaking wet, their noses cherry red, faces glowing with health. Daisy was sniffing audibly, close to reluctant tears, because Ellie had stuffed a snowball down her neck. For some reason, Ruby hugged the three of them extravagantly, even Ellie who’d been such an extremely naughty little girl.

  By the end of the following year, Greta and Heather had become competent shorthand typists. Greta moved to a different firm, but Heather was promoted to secretary in the solicitors and began to study towards becoming a legal clerk.

  In 1968, Beth’s youngest child, Seymour, enrolled at Liverpool University and it seemed only natural for him to stay with the O’Hagans. He was eighteen, a stranger in a strange land, who’d abandoned his country to escape the draft. On the other side of the world a cruel and pitiless battle was being fought as America attempted to wrest North Vietnam from the control of the Communists. Daniel Lefarge wasn’t prepared for his son to be sacrificed in what he considered was a white man’s war. On this, he and Beth wholeheartedly agreed.

  Seymour was a shy, withdrawn young man, not a bit like Jake, his half brother. He studied hard in his room upstairs, but always came down for the Nine o’Clock News on television, when he would watch, making no comment, when students in his home country were shown demonstrating against the war, or when scenes of the fighting appeared on the screen and the numbers of dead were announced.

  After the long, hot summer break, Seymour didn’t return to university for his second year. Ruby found his room empty of most of his things and a note on the bed:

  ‘I don’t like being a coward. By the time you read this, I will have given myself up to the American Embassy in London. Please remind Pop that all my life he taught me to fight and I can’t just stop when it pleases him. I need to fight for my country, otherwise I won’t be able to live with myself for the rest of my life. Tell Mom I love her.’

  In the first month of the new decade, January 1970, Private Seymour Lefarge lost his young life in the jungles of North Vietnam. For a long time, Beth was inconsolable, but eventually the memory of her son was tucked away in a corner of her mind to be brought out and cherished during times when she was alone. Daniel, though, never recovered. From the moment he heard about Seymour’s death, he was a changed man.

  Ruby had only witnessed the sixties from afar. She was too old to have gone to the Cavern, an open-air pop concert, worn flowers in her hair, and sung songs extolling love and peace. Carnaby Street could have been on the moon for all the chance she’d had of seeing it and, although the Liverpool Sound had spread throughout the world, she’d only heard it on Top
of the Pops.

  Even so, she was aware that the sixties had mainly been a heady, idealistic decade when compared to the ugly violence of the seventies. In Vietnam, the conflict was escalating and, suddenly, there seemed to be wars all over the place. Politicians were kidnapped and murdered, planes hijacked. Even on mainland Britain, bombs were killing and maiming innocent people as a consequence of the troubles in Northern Ireland.

  She remembered the day that war had been declared on Germany and she and Beth had taken the children to Princes Park. Jake was still in his pram. Then, she’d been terrified that her children would be hurt. More than thirty years later, Ruby wondered what sort of world awaited her granddaughters when they grew up.

  Daisy and the twins

  Chapter 13

  1975–1981

  Clint’s problem was he was far too polite, Daisy thought wretchedly. It wouldn’t enter his head to tell Ellie he was in a hurry. If they didn’t leave soon, they’d be late for the film and she’d been looking forward to seeing Godfather II for ages and didn’t want to miss a single minute. It meant they’d have to go to a different film and she hadn’t a clue what else was on.

  Was she the only person in the world who saw through her cousin and realised what a horrid person she was? Didn’t Auntie Greta, or Moira, or even Daisy’s own mother, consider it unreasonable for Ellie to ask Clint in her sweet, helpless way – though the real Ellie wasn’t even vaguely sweet or the least bit helpless – if he wouldn’t mind fixing her portable radio just when he and Daisy were about to go out? Gran might have said something, but she was in the kitchen washing up. Daisy had rushed into the bedroom – no one had noticed – to sulk and seethe and feel wretched on her own.

  Of course, she could have said something herself, but was worried she’d show herself in a bad light next to the sweet and helpless Ellie who was always as nice as pie when Clint was around. Daisy could hear her, giggling like a little girl, while he tried to fix her radio, which he knew as much about as Daisy did herself.