by Penny Jordan
Using the stairs, Daniel emerged on to a cream-walled hallway, the plasterwork details picked out in authentic period colours, the rug adorning the polished floor a valuable antique which he had picked up at a country house sale, long before anyone else had realised the potential of such items.
Inside, the flat was furnished with antiques he had collected in a similar fashion. His drawing-room overlooked the trees and railed-off garden which ran the length of the small square. Behind the drawing-room was a good-sized dining-room, large enough for entertaining, and adjacent to that a comfortable kitchen with access to a small roof garden.
Daniel had no live-in help, preferring to fend for himself and to preserve his privacy. When he entertained he hired caterers, and none of the women who had shared his life had ever spent more than a succession of separate nights under his roof. None of them had ever been invited to move into the flat with him. He was not a man who considered himself to be a sexual stud, or who had any desire to do so.
He liked women; he enjoyed their company, their conversation, their personalities and their minds as much as he enjoyed their bodies. From time to time, when they were short of something to print, one or other of the gossip columns would run a piece on him, naming his latest lady, speculating on whether or not this time he would marry. He was not against marriage. Or at least not against the theory of it… but its practice was fraught with so many pitfalls. What he was against was divorce, especially when there were children involved.
He walked over to a large breakfront bookcase, opening one of its drawers and extracting from it a bottle of whisky and a glass, and then, frowning, he put them both back, resolutely closed the door and went through into the kitchen, opening the fridge and extracting a bottle of mineral water instead.
For a man of thirty-seven, who spent long hours seated round boardroom tables, he was extremely fit. He wasn't obsessive about punishing physical exercise, hours spent sweating in a gym or pounding through Hyde Park, but he spent as much of his free time as he could in the country, riding, and walking, and he also used the pool at a local health club two or three times a week.
He shed his jacket and picked up his mineral water, the muscles in his back and arms hard under the fine cotton of his shirt.
Opening the door, he walked out on to the roof garden, putting down his glass and going to lean against the railings, looking over the roof-tops of London.
As a child growing up in one of the worst slum areas of Liverpool, the kind of luxury he enjoyed now had been something he could not even have imagined, but his mother had loved beautiful things, telling him about the furniture in the houses she cleaned, the people who lived there, and he had known then with the impotent misery of childhood that his mother wasn't happy, that it wasn't just because they did not live in one of the houses she was telling him about that he could hear the sadness in her voice.
His mother was Welsh, a pretty dark girl from the valleys with a voice so melodic that it caught at your heart. His father was Irish, a huge burly bear of a man who got work whenever he could, and when he couldn't spent his day in the pub drinking. He was their only child, and he had heard from his mother of how she had met his father when he had come to work on the new road which had opened up the valleys, how they had married and come to live here in Liverpool, where his father's family had lived for the last two generations.
They were from County Cork originally, and, despite their years in Liverpool, had remained resolutely and defiantly Irish. His grandparents had raised seven children in the tiny shabby terraced house down near the docks; a rowdy, noisy gathering of Ryans, who had eventually spilled out of the parental nest to marry and produce Ryans of their own.
Sometimes Daniel thought that Liverpool was populated entirely with his cousins. But he wasn't like them. It was something to do with Mam being Welsh. The others, unlike his father, had all married good Irish girls, and although nothing was ever said in his presence, Daniel sensed that his family was different. For a start there was the way that Nan Ryan never quite looked at his mother, and then there was the way that all the others, all his aunts and uncles, had produced several children apiece, while his parents had only him.
For some reason he felt that this failure had something to do with him… that the reason his father never picked him up or hugged him the way Uncle Liam did his boys or the way Uncle Joe did his had something to do with the fact that it was his fault he was the only one.
One thing he did know, and that was that for a Ryan to produce only one child was a failure of some kind. His mother sensed it too…otherwise why did she always change so much when they paid their Sunday visit to Nan's? When it was just the two of them on their own, although sometimes she was sad, there were other times when she laughed, sang, when she told him stories in her little Welsh voice—stories of dragons and heroes that made his eyes grow as round as saucers and his heart clench with fearful excitement.
But on Sundays his mother was different…just as though somehow all the life had drained out of her.
And then there was the mystery of Mam's parents. Daniel knew that they lived in Wales, but they never went to see them, and only at Christmas did they hear from them. A Christmas card, and a pound for his savings book.
He often wanted to ask Mam about them. It was a strange thing that, although she talked about Wales and her girlhood, she never talked about her family.
Daniel longed to ask about them, but her silence on the subject stopped him. He was a sensitive child, smaller and more frail than his Ryan cousins, who taunted him and called him a sissy. Daniel was wary with them; the boys he could cope with, but not the girls, for they pinched and tormented, and then screamed as though he had been the one to torment them. Their screams would bring one of the adults to see what was happening.
'It were that Daniel,' one of them would claim tearfully. ' 'E pinched me…'
And Daniel would get a cuff from whichever adult had been roused from an enjoyable gossip in the parlour to see who had caused the noise.
'That Daniel of yours is a real troublemaker,' he had once heard Nan caustically telling Mam. He had wanted to protest, to claim that it wasn't true, but there had been a huge lump in his throat, because he had known that Nan wouldn't believe him, that for some reason it pleased her to call him the cause of the trouble. He couldn't understand that, just as he couldn't understand why he was never pulled on to her lap for a cuddle, why whenever the precious sweets were being handed out he was invariably forgotten, why his uncles never picked him up and tossed him up into the air the way they did the other boys.
Even his own father seemed to prefer the others to him. Scowling at him when they were out, ignoring him when they were at home… Not that Daniel saw much of him.
He didn't come home at teatime like the majority of the other men, but went straight to the pub, often not coming back until Daniel was in bed. He would hear him returning, cursing and swearing as he hammered on the door, shouting at his mother, demanding to know where his supper was.
It was at times like this that Daniel winced and pulled the bedclothes up over his head. Other fathers raised their voices—he had heard his uncles do it to their offspring—but somehow or other when his father raised his… Daniel shivered. He was reasonably sure that he didn't love his father, at least not in the same instinctive, elemental way he loved his mother, and he suspected that his father didn't love him either, and that gave him a funny pain inside, a sort of sad, soft pain that was sharp as well.
When Daniel was eleven years old he sat the state Eleven Plus examination along with all his peers.
When the results were published and they learned not only that he had passed the examination but also that he had won a free place to a prestigious fee-paying local school, his mother was delighted.
Not so his father.
He came home late, reeking of beer. Daniel and his mother were in the kitchen when he arrived. As his father walked into the kitchen, Daniel saw the way his moth
er tensed. It suddenly struck him how small she was. He had been growing and now he was practically as tall as she was, both of them dwarfed by his father's heavy six-foot-odd frame.
His father was in a bad mood—Daniel could tell that immediately. He was swearing and complaining about Dick Fogarty, the foreman of his gang, and Daniel felt his heart sink. Work wasn't that easy to come by in Liverpool, and his father had already been sent off too many jobs, had too many fights with the other men. He had heard his uncles discussing it, seen them exchanging significant looks.
Quickly his mother produced his father's meal. He liked to eat the moment he came home. Personally Daniel thought that his father ought surely to go upstairs and get washed before sitting down to eat. His fingers were ingrained with dirt, the nails black and broken. Daniel and his mother had fish-paste sandwiches for their meal, but she had managed to scrape enough together from her meagre wages as a cleaner to buy enough stewing steak to make his father a pie.
Although nothing was ever said, Daniel knew quite well that his father did not always give his mother any money and that often all she had to spend on food and pay the rent was the money she earned cleaning. It grieved Daniel to see her walking down the street sometimes. She looked so tired, her shoulders bowed, her eyes dull…just the way she looked whenever his father came back late like this and drunk.
Daniel heard him swear as she served him the pie, complaining that it was no meal to put in front of a working man.
'Some of me mam's stew, that's what I want… and that's what I'm going to have,' he snarled, pushing away his plate and getting up. 'You know what the trouble with you is, don't you?' he added from the door. 'You think yourself so high and mighty, but you don't know how to treat a man. Well, think on this: if it wasn't for me, you and that brat of yours—'
'John… John, please wait a moment…'
Daniel heard the desperation in his mother's voice and hated his father. Hated him for what he was doing to his mother.
'Daniel…Daniel's won a place to the Drapers School. Isn't that wonderful…?'
For a moment there was silence, and then Daniel saw his father turn and stare at him. There was cruelty in his eyes and malice as well. The venom of the look he gave him almost took away Daniel's breath.
He had known that his father didn't love him, but this…this hatred, this enmity…
'Wonderful… Is that what you think? Well, I don't think it, and I'll tell you this—no son of mine is going to some poxy posh school. No. He'll go to Mile End, same as his dad, same as his cousins.'
Mile End… the largest and worst secondary school in the district. Daniel knew all about Mile End, about the fights, the gangs. His eldest cousin ran one of them. Daniel shivered.
'No, John… please… You don't understand—this is a wonderful opportunity for Daniel. If he does well he could go on to university. He could—'
'He could do what? Set himself up above his father and his cousins?'
His mother was clinging to his father's arm as she pleaded with him. The tension in the small kitchen seemed to smoulder with suppressed emotions, the strongest of them his own fear, Daniel recognised.
He dared not speak to his father, dared not try to plead with him.
'John, please,' his mother begged. 'He must have his chance.'
An ugly look crossed his father's face. 'Oh, he must, must he? He's my son, Megan. You just remember that. He's my son, and he'll get his schooling where I say. The trouble with you is that you've only got him to worry about. You know that Father Leary says…'
Daniel watched as his mother gave his father a fearful look. Daniel knew all about the priest. He visited Nan's every Sunday and he spoke to everyone apart from Mam and himself. But they weren't Catholics. His mother was Chapel, and had stayed in the faith of her childhood even after her marriage to his father.
Initially it had puzzled Daniel when he had not gone to church like his cousins, but then he had discovered about Mam being Chapel and had assumed that it had something to do with this.
Now, as he saw the nervous look his mother gave her father, something inside him contracted. He wanted to go up to her and put his arms round her, to protect her.
'John, please,' his mother begged again, and Daniel tensed as his father pulled away from her, shaking her off as easily as though she were a child, half pushing and half throwing her across the small kitchen, so that she fell against the stove.
'He's not going and that's that. What does a Ryan want with a fancy school? And who's going to pay for it? Soon as he's old enough he's out on a building site same as his cousins, earning his keep.'
His mother was leaning against the stove, her face tight with pain, her hand gripping her left hip. Daniel watched in silence as his father pushed past her and went out.
He didn't come back until Daniel was in bed. It was the sound of his raised voice that woke him. That, and his mother crying.
The next morning for the first time his mother didn't come in to wake him for school, and when he got up he discovered that she was still in bed, lying motionless in the small stuffy room, her face turned into the shadows.
'No, don't open the curtains,' she told him. Her voice had lost its lilt. It sounded heavy and sore somehow and suddenly Daniel was frightened without knowing why. There was no sign of his father and his mother was still in bed when he left for school. She had a bit of a headache, she told him, but she would be fine by and by.
When he got home- from school the house was empty. There was a note from his mother to say she would be late getting home but he wasn't to worry.
After six when his father came in, early for once, she still wasn't back. Watching the way his face glowered at him as he demanded to know where she was, Daniel felt a strong current of antipathy and fear run through him.
'Still thinks she's going to persuade me to let you go to that fancy school, is that it? Well, you can tell her that she can think again. No money of mine's going to be wasted on posh schooling—uniforms, expensive books…'
'Where are you going?' Daniel asked his father nervously as he opened the back door.
'Nowhere that's any of your business. God knows a man's entitled to a bit of comfort, even the priest says that.'
It was seven o'clock before his mother returned. She looked both elated and frightened.
'Sorry I'm so late, but I missed the bus and then it was busy.'
'Did you have to work late?' Daniel asked her.
'What? Oh, yes… yes, I did…'
There was a livid bruise along her cheekbone and she was moving very stiffly as though her body hurt. When Daniel asked if she had had a fall, she turned her back on him and started cleaning the already clean sink.
'Yes… yes, I slipped on the stairs this morning after you'd gone to school. Must have been half asleep still, I suppose. I've got a nice bit of haddock for your tea. Mrs Silverstone gave it to me… Seems she bought it for her husband and he was eating out somewhere and she doesn't like it.'
Beneath his mother's bright chatter, Daniel could sense her tension. He gave her his father's message and watched her anxiously.
'It's all right,' she told him softly. 'You'll be taking up that scholarship, my lad—but not a word to your dad, mind.'
'But what about money?'
'Don't you worry your head about all that. It's all arranged. Your Nan's going to help out, and with what I earn—'
'Nan?' Daniel blinked at her. 'Nan's going to help? But she doesn't like me, not as much as she does the others. On Sundays—'
He saw his mother bite her lip. 'No, not your Nan Ryan, Danny. I was speaking of your Nana Rees. I… I telephoned her today from Mrs Silverstone's. It was all right. She had given me permission but I wanted to wait until the cheap rate after six o'clock.'
'Nana Rees…' Daniel stared wonderingly at his mother. 'But—'
'No, no questions, Danny… and remember, nothing to your dad, not a word.'
Daniel had been almost sixteen when his fa
ther had been killed on a building site. He couldn't mourn him. He hated him too much by then. He might not have been able to stop his son taking up his scholarship, but he had certainly made his mother pay for it, and not just with periodic beatings Daniel was sure he gave her, even though his mother herself always denied it, always claimed stoically that she had had a fall, that she had been clumsy.
So often Daniel had ached to ask her why she stayed, why she didn't leave. He knew she couldn't love him. How could any woman love a man who treated her the way his father treated his mother? It wasn't just the beatings, it was his whole attitude towards her. Daniel knew enough about his father's religion now to know that there could be no divorce. No Ryan ever divorced— and he also knew from listening to the conversations of his cousins and his uncles that his father had another woman whom he visited regularly, sometimes staying overnight with her.
'Course, it's her who I blame,' he had heard Liam's wife, Sheila, saying. 'If she'd been a proper wife to him, she'd have kept him at home. I mean, it's obvious they're not sleeping together… they've only got Danny.'
The thought of his mother having to endure the sexual attentions of his father was something that revolted Daniel. He could hardly bear to comprehend that his very life force had come from that coupling, that he owed his entire existence to his rough, brutish father's coupling with his mother.
He still did not know if his father knew where the money came from that kept him at school. He knew, though, and he was determined that as soon as he was able he was going to repay his mother for all the sacrifices she had made on his behalf—and not just his mother, there was his unknown grandmother to thank as well.
Many times he asked his mother why they never went to Wales, why they never saw her family. He knew now that both her parents were alive, that she had a married brother, that he had Welsh cousins.
The cousins didn't concern him. There was no love lost between his Irish cousins and himself. They considered him to be an outsider, different, set apart from them by virtue of his Welsh blood. The Welsh bastard, they called him, and he stoically endured it because he had told himself that never, ever would he do to a human being with his fists, in violence and out of a desire to damage and inflict pain, what his father had done to his mother. That he would never, ever in his life raise his hand to a fellow human being. He stuck to that decision all through the early painful years at school when he had been very much an outsider among the other pupils from their privileged, comfortable homes…