The House By Princes Park

by Maureen Lee

  ‘Come on, Ellie,’ a boy called slyly, ‘have a heart. John Perry said you’re an easy lay.’

  Moira glanced at Ellie. ‘Aren’t you offended?’ she asked, but her sister just shrugged. If a boy had said that to her, she’d have slapped his face. They walked in silence for a while until Moira said, ‘Unless it’s true.’

  Still Ellie didn’t answer, but smiled instead, as if she wasn’t a bit perturbed by the suggestion.

  ‘I know some nights you go upstairs to Liam Conway’s room.’ Moira was an exceptionally light sleeper. Ellie or Daisy only had to turn over for her to wake up. It was months now since she’d first heard her sister creep upstairs. Shortly afterwards, the bed in Liam’s room which was directly overhead would creak. About an hour later, Ellie would return. Moira hadn’t said anything, being a firm believer in letting the world go by with the minimum of interference. People, her sister included, were masters of their own destiny, and if Ellie wanted to sleep with Liam Conway, then it was up to her. She was, however, a little disturbed at the idea that Ellie was sleeping around.

  ‘Are you going to clat on me?’ Ellie said casually.

  ‘You know I won’t.’ Moira had never told tales in her life.

  ‘Not that I care, like. I just wondered. Another thing, don’t tell anyone this either, but when Liam goes back to Dublin in June, I’m going with him.’

  ‘They mightn’t let you.’

  ‘They can’t stop me. Anyroad, so as to avoid a fuss, I might just run away.’

  ‘That would be very inconsiderate, Ellie.’ Despite not wanting to interfere, Moira was extremely shocked. She also believed people should have standards. ‘Mum would be terribly upset and it would break Gran’s heart.’

  Ellie looked momentarily abashed. ‘Oh, I’ll come back, don’t worry,’ she assured her sister. ‘Dublin will just be the first of my adventures. I shall have loads more.’

  ‘Aren’t you worried you’ll get pregnant?’

  ‘I can’t. I’m on the pill.’

  Moira could never quite understand her twin. Sometimes, she wondered if Ellie’s heart beat twice as fast as other people’s, if her blood raced around her body when everyone else’s merely flowed. She was never still, always agitated, impatient, wanting to do things first, be the centre of attention, be the loudest, the brightest, the most daring of all. Ellie had to have everything.

  Yet she wasn’t happy. Moira was the only person who recognised the turbulent nature of her sister hid a dissatisfaction that would never be soothed by normal means. Ellie craved excitement, it was the reason why, years ago, she’d stolen things from school. Fortunately, the culprit had never been discovered. It was why she’d started sleeping with men, why she wanted to run away.

  ‘Did you do it with John Perry?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Behind the gym, after school.’

  ‘Say if you’d been seen! You’d have been made to leave and couldn’t have done your A levels.’

  ‘Who cares!’ Ellie laughed. ‘Anyroad, I wasn’t seen, was I?’

  Sometimes, Ellie would watch through the bedroom window when Clint brought Daisy home. All he did was kiss her, and then only the once. He didn’t realise what he was missing. Half the girls in the sixth form were crazy about him and would have gone much further than just a kiss.

  Yet Clint stuck to Daisy, despite Ellie having made it obvious that she fancied him. She’d like to bet he was a virgin, which was no wonder, having the ugly, clodhopping Daisy for a girlfriend.

  Before she went to Dublin, Ellie resolved she’d do her utmost to seduce Clint Shaw, show him what it was like to be with a real woman! It would be a problem finding the opportunity, they were hardly ever alone together, but that only made the task more exciting.

  Ellie rubbed her hands together. She could hardly wait!

  Ruby regarded the painting with dismay. ‘It’s very nice, love,’ she said, trying to put some enthusiasm into her voice.

  ‘It’s the view from the office window,’ Daisy explained. ‘I had to do it from memory.’

  ‘You’re lucky, having such a lovely view.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Daisy sighed. ‘Though I find it very distracting.’

  Daisy was very easily distracted when she had to work. It had been the same at school when she’d always been bottom of the class, except for Art, which was surprising considering the dreadful paintings she turned out. The latest was particularly crudely done, the paint laid on thickly like tar. Instead of being smooth, the sky was full of ridges and for some reason the river was white and grey lumps. There was a strange figure standing in the water which Ruby eventually recognised as a dog and the other, even stranger figure, on the sand – more lumps – was presumably its owner.

  ‘What’s this, love?’ she asked, pointing to what looked like litter on the beach.

  ‘Children. They’re collecting shells and stuff. And that’s their mother with a pram.’

  ‘As I said, it’s very nice.’

  ‘Where shall I hang it? It still needs hooks and some string. Ellie doesn’t like my paintings in our bedroom. She said they’re ugly.’

  ‘I’ll put it in my room, shall I?’ Most of Daisy’s unframed work went in Ruby’s room. Even Heather refused to hang her daughter’s paintings in a place where they could be seen. Ruby had put some in the students’ rooms and none had so far complained. ‘Leave it where it is for now, love,’ she said.

  ‘OK, Gran,’ Daisy said happily. ‘I’ll go and tidy the shed.’ She painted in the garden shed where Mrs Hart’s garden tools were still stored, including a roller that couldn’t be budged.

  Mrs Kilfoyle, who taught Art, had suggested Daisy go to college for the subject, but Heather had put her foot down and refused. ‘I wouldn’t take any notice of Mrs Kilfoyle. She’s as daft as a brush. Our Daisy lazed her way through school. It’s about time she buckled down to some proper work.’

  Daisy had meekly agreed. ‘Anyroad,’ she confided to Ruby, ‘I don’t want to leave one school for another.’ It was obvious she’d had enough. Not long afterwards, she arrived home laden with boxes of paint and squares of hardboard and set up work in the shed, where it was either freezing cold or like an oven depending on the weather. Even Heather felt guilty for not having provided the materials before.

  ‘Oh, Mam! She mustn’t have liked asking us to buy them. She waited till she was earning money of her own. I thought that O level was just a fluke.’

  The paintings that emerged from the shed only confirmed that Heather had been right. The O level had indeed been a fluke.

  Ruby’s heart bled for her unhappy granddaughter. How would poor Daisy cope as she grew older? She fervently hoped she and Clint would get married. A genuinely nice boy, he was clearly fond of her – and she of him, though it would mean his mother, the loathsome Pixie, would become a member of the family.

  Everyone had eaten, the dishes had been washed and dried, the kitchen looked unusually clean – a sight that Ruby always found slightly disturbing it was so unnatural. Daisy was out with Clint, and the twins were in the bedroom doing their homework. An evening in front of the television with Heather and Greta stretched ahead seductively.

  Ruby was about to switch on Coronation Street, when Heather said, ‘Mam, I thought I’d better tell you, me and Greta booked a holiday in Corfu today. We’re going for a fortnight in July.’

  ‘How kind of you – to tell me that is,’ she said icily. ‘Well, at least I’ll know where you are when you disappear for two whole weeks.’

  Heather looked taken aback. ‘We didn’t think you’d mind.’

  ‘I’d like to have been consulted first. I assume you’re not taking your children with you, that they’re being left with me?’

  ‘We couldn’t afford for the five of us to go.’

  ‘Oh, dear! But thank goodness you can afford to pay for two. I hope you both have a lovely time.’

  ‘We’ll cancel it if you like,’
Greta offered, sensing her mother wasn’t exactly pleased at the news.

  ‘Though we’ll lose the deposit,’ Heather warned.

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of putting you to any inconvenience. Fortunately, your holiday doesn’t clash with mine.’ Ruby had never made up her mind so quickly about anything before.

  ‘You’re going away?’ the girls gasped, more or less together.

  ‘I’m going to stay with Beth in Washington for a week in June. It’s International Women’s Year and there’s all sorts of things going on.’

  ‘But how will we cope without you?’ Greta wailed.

  ‘Same way as I’ll cope without you.’

  ‘Have you booked the flight?’ demanded Heather.

  ‘No. I intended discussing it with you first,’ Ruby lied shamelessly. She was fed up being taken for granted. ‘All you have to do is get up early and make everyone’s breakfast, then do the dinner when you come home. I’ll change the beds before I go,’ she said helpfully.

  ‘Why couldn’t you have gone later, like us, when the students will have gone?’

  ‘You obviously haven’t noticed, Heather, but we have foreign students in the summer. The upstairs rooms can’t stay empty for three and a half months. We need the money.’

  ‘Actually, Mam,’ Greta grumbled, ‘We could do with the whole house to ourselves. I wouldn’t mind a room to meself, and neither would Heather, and the girls are too old for three to a room.’

  ‘If you’d like to ask your boss for a two hundred per cent rise, then we can have the whole house to ourselves.’

  ‘You’re being dead sarcastic tonight, Mam. Why can’t we get a cheaper house?’

  Ruby guffawed. ‘With a room each for the six of us! Which planet are you living on, Greta?’

  ‘We could ask Uncle Matt to reduce the rent.’

  ‘Don’t you dare even think such a thing!’ Ruby angrily thumped the arm of the settee and the girls jumped. ‘We’re fortunate to get it as cheap as we do. It’s a lovely house and you’re not exactly cramped sleeping two or three to a room. Nowadays, Matthew could sell this place for thousands and thousands of pounds. You should be thanking your lucky stars, not complaining. Now would someone mind switching on Coronation Street? I’ve already missed half.’

  Ellie couldn’t make head nor tail of Milton’s Paradise Lost, which was part of the English A level. It was something to do with hell having been taken over by some guy called Beelzebub. When the class had finished, she asked Clint Shaw if he understood what it was about.

  ‘Well, yes,’ he stammered.

  ‘Then help me with tonight’s essay.’ She fluttered her lashes and looked at him pleadingly. ‘We could do it together.’

  ‘I was going to do mine as soon as I got home. Me and Daisy are going out tonight.’

  ‘Then I’ll come with you,’ Ellie said with alacrity. ‘Your mum won’t mind, will she?’

  He didn’t look terribly keen on the idea, but he’d never been able to refuse her anything. ‘Mum won’t be there. She goes to work.’

  Ellie already knew that. Fate had provided the perfect opportunity to seduce Clint Shaw.

  The Shaws lived in a street of substantial terraced houses off Wavertree Road, a street that Ruby had been very familiar with when she’d been the pawnshop runner, though the young people didn’t know that. Ellie had been to the Shaws’ house before. She thought it rather garish and over-furnished.

  ‘I usually do me homework in the kitchen,’ Clint mumbled.

  ‘That’s OK by me.’

  They spread their books on the lime green table, sat on the lime green chairs, and he explained that Paradise Lost described the fall of man for having disobeyed God’s laws. Satan was trying to exact revenge for being expelled from heaven.

  ‘You make it sound so much clearer,’ exclaimed Ellie, filling her eyes with admiration.

  Clint blushed. Gosh, she marvelled as the blush spread over his smooth, fair skin, he was incredibly good-looking. How come he hadn’t realised? Why didn’t he play the field as boys did who were only half as attractive? His hair was thick and blond and almost straight apart from the ends which flicked up slightly, not quite reaching the collar of his school blazer, but not short enough to look old-fashioned. Everything about his face was perfect, from the fine eyebrows, grey eyes with lashes that most women would give their eye teeth for – not Ellie, who had equally long lashes of her own – straight nose, and slightly full mouth.

  Gran used to wonder aloud where Clint had got his looks from. ‘Not his mother, that’s for sure.’ She’d never liked Pixie. ‘They must have come from his dad.’ Brian Shaw had turned out to be a rougher, tougher version of his son.

  ‘Can I have a glass of water?’

  ‘I’ll make tea if you like?’

  ‘Oh, please.’ She got to her feet when he did. ‘I’ll help, shall I?’ By the sink, she brushed against him so that her breast touched his arm. Clint looked embarrassed and edged away. Ellie giggled, slid her hand inside his blazer, and tickled him. She lifted her head and bit his ear, then rubbed her lips against his cheek. ‘You need a shave,’ she whispered, before kissing him fully on the lips.

  She would never forget his reaction. He shuddered violently, as if he’d just had an electric shock and pushed her away. ‘Don’t do that!’

  ‘Oh, come on, Clint. What harm would it do.’ She approached him again and was about to put her arms around his neck, but he caught hold of her hands and held them tightly. ‘That hurts,’ she complained in a babyish voice.

  ‘Leave me alone.’ He flung her hands away, as if they were contaminated. There was a look on his face, as if he wanted to be sick.

  ‘Why?’ Ellie demanded.

  ‘Because Daisy’s me girlfriend. It wouldn’t be fair on her.’

  Neither spoke for quite some time, just stared at each other across the room. Then, with a shiver of comprehension, Ellie understood. She felt herself go very cold.

  ‘No, that’s not why,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s nothing to do with Daisy. It’s because you don’t like women. You’re a queer.’

  ‘Just because I don’t fancy you, it doesn’t mean I’m a queer,’ he blustered, looking even sicker.

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ Ellie conceded. ‘But you’d have behaved the same with any woman. I just know.’ She began to put the books back in her satchel.

  Clint was trembling, leaning against the sink, supporting himself with his hands, as if his legs were about to give way. His face had lost all vestige of colour and his eyes were hot and feverish.

  ‘Don’t tell Daisy.’ The hoarse voice was as agonised as his face. ‘Don’t tell anyone. Please!’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Ellie assured him. She felt scared and a little bit ashamed. ‘I won’t tell a soul.’

  That night, Daisy came home early when everyone was still up. She burst into the living room, eyes shining. ‘You’ll never guess,’ she cried.

  ‘Guess what?’ demanded a chorus of voices.

  Ellie didn’t speak. She sensed what her cousin was about to say.

  ‘We didn’t go to the pictures, but for a walk instead. Clint asked me to marry him. We’re getting engaged. On Saturday, we’re going to town to buy a ring. Only a cheap one,’ she added quickly. ‘He’s only got a few pounds of pocket money saved.’

  ‘Oh, that’s wonderful, love.’ Gran leapt to her feet and hugged Daisy warmly. ‘What do you think, Heather?’

  Heather frowned. ‘You’re awfully young, Daisy.’

  ‘But Mum, we’re not getting married for ages, not till Clint’s at least twenty-one. We might go to live in London where it’ll be easier for him to get the sort of job he wants, scriptwriting, or something.’ She smiled blissfully.

  ‘Congratulations, Daise!’ Moira planted a kiss on Daisy’s freckled cheek.

  ‘I’ll get the sherry and we’ll drink a toast,’ Gran cried. ‘Someone fetch the glasses. What a pity Clint didn’t come in so we could have congratulated him too.’
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  ‘You know Clint, he’s terribly shy,’ Daisy said with a proprietorial air. She examined the third finger of her left hand as if she could already see herself wearing the cheap ring.

  ‘I hope you’ll be very happy, Daisy.’ Ellie gave her cousin a brief hug. She’d never had much time for Daisy, but she was family and meant more to her than Clint Shaw ever would. He saw nothing threatening about Daisy and was using her as a cover. Was she supposed to protect him at the expense of Daisy’s happiness, let her go blithely ahead and marry the guy?

  Yet she’d never seen Daisy as happy as she was now, as if a light had come on inside her. How could she spoil everything by telling the truth? Did Daisy know what a queer was? Would anyone, not just Daisy, believe her if she told them what she knew about Clint Shaw? Ellie doubted it.

  Chapter 14

  She wanted to see the White House, Georgetown, the Lincoln Memorial, sail along the Potomac to Mount Vernon, visit museums and art galleries, which she wouldn’t have dreamt of doing at home, but was the sort of thing people did on holiday. She bought a guidebook and made a list of sights to see.

  Beth was delighted she was coming to Washington and had booked a room at her hotel. ‘You’ll love it, Rube. There’ll be loads of exciting things to do, and you’ll meet all my friends.’

  As usual, Ruby’s wardrobe was devoid of anything smart, but now she had a perfect excuse to renew it. Everyone in the house contributed in some way towards the holiday in Washington, even the students who clubbed together and bought a lovely black leather handbag to thank her for being such a great landlady. Before leaving, Ruby bade them a fond farewell. They would be gone by the time she came back.

  Greta and Heather stayed in for three Saturdays in a row to see to things in the house, giving their mother time to roam the city shops and look for clothes. A delirious Ruby, drunk with excitement, purchased an elegant black linen suit, a blue frilly blouse and a plain white one to wear under it, two floaty, feminine Indian frocks in stunning jewel colours, a pair of daringly high-heeled shoes to go with the suit and gold sandals to go with the frocks.