‘I reckon you’re right, at that,’ Lynn repeated.
‘He’s completely buggered your life up, hasn’t he, that little swine,’ Janet frowned.
*
Graham called on the sunny Sunday morning before August Bank Holiday, to take Simon to West Park.
‘It’s the last chance he’ll get to go in the paddling pool,’ he said. ‘They’ll be emptying it before the kids go back to school, getting everything ready for winter. Why don’t you come with us? Get away from those books for a bit.’
‘This is something new,’ Lynn said. ‘I’ve never known you to be so clued up about paddling pools before.’
Simon grabbed her hand, and looked eagerly up at her. ‘Pleeease! Please, please, pleeease, come to the paddling pool,’ she begged.
She looked down at his hopeful little face, wavered, and gave in. Simon was overjoyed. It seemed a small sacrifice, to see him so happy.
‘But you needn’t think I’ll be making a habit of it,’ she told Graham.
‘I don’t.’
Simon held both their hands on the walk up to the park, in ecstasies when they ran and swung him in between them.
‘How’s the newlyweds doing?’
‘All right.’
‘He must be back at sea by now.’
‘He’s not. He’s got a mate’s job. He sails on Wednesday.’
‘Just married, and a promotion. He’ll be on decent money, then.’
‘It all depends how much fish they can catch. If they don’t catch enough, he could land in debt.’
‘Ah. Good luck to him, then. Might not be long before he’s a skipper.’
The park was packed with people out with their families. The pool was full of young children with the August sun beating down on their pale skins, and glittering on the water. Simon stripped down to his trunks and was in the pool in a minute,
He beckoned to Graham. ‘Come on in, Dad!’
Graham took off his shoes and rolled his trousers up, and joined Simon and the handful of other parents paddling round beside their young children. Just as he’d done last summer, in the pre-Mandy days, Lynn remembered. She walked beside them for a while, and then spotted Brenda and Orla, sitting on one of the benches. Well, well, she thought and strolled over to them.
‘We wondered when you’d notice us,’ Brenda said. ‘I didn’t expect to see you out with Graham.’
‘I’m not out with Graham. I’m just tagging along because Simon wanted me to.’
‘He’ll like that, being out with you both. We’re just waiting for Anthony to pick us up, then we’ll get the girls out of the pool and drop them off. We’re going to do a bit of shopping together while he’s at home.
‘Speak of the devil!’ Lynn said, as she saw Anthony coming towards them – accompanied by Alec. ‘I thought Alec was supposed to have sailed on the Sprite!’ she exclaimed.
‘Oh, yes,’ Brenda said. ‘There was some sort of trouble with it, I didn’t quite catch the details.’
Simon had done a lap round the pool, followed by Graham. He stopped when he saw Brenda and Orla and shouted to them, all smiles and eyes sparkling.
‘I’m paddling with my dad! I’m starting school soon! My dad’s bought me some new shoes!’
‘New shoes!’ Orla laughed. ‘That’s lovely, Simon. I love new shoes! I’m going to get some today.’
But now Simon had spotted Anthony and Alec and shouted the same news to them.
‘That’s great, Simon!’ Alec called back.
‘Yeah, wonderful,’ Anthony said, sardonically.
Graham wisely stayed in the pool, and Simon paddled away with him.
Orla smiled up at Alec and got to her feet. ‘Come and help me round the girls up,’ she invited.
Alec looked towards Lynn and when she met his eyes he held her gaze, looking as uncomfortable as any man could.
‘You’re off into town, then?’ she said.
He nodded. ‘Maybe for an hour or two.’
He didn’t ask her to join them, nor did he ask about the divorce. Lynn chose to cling on to her tattered pride rather than tell him something that apparently no longer concerned him.
Orla left them no time for further conversation. ‘Come on, Alec, come and help me get them,’ she urged. ‘They’ve been in there two hours already.’
Alec did as he was told. Anthony was very quiet as he watched them go.
‘Shortest trip I’ve ever heard of,’ Lynn said. ‘It can’t be a week since he was supposed to have sailed.’
Anthony gave her the sort of look people reserve for the bereaved. ‘A bit of trouble with the crew, from what I’ve heard.’
‘Really!’
‘Simon looks as if he’s enjoying himself,’ Brenda said, brightly. ‘Which school will he be going to?’
Alec and Orla came back with the little girls while they were discussing the merits and demerits of various infant schools, and Brenda and Orla began to towel them dry and dress them. The caressing glances and the little smiles she kept throwing in his direction made Orla’s interest in Alec obvious to everybody. Alec himself seemed only too aware of them, but kept stealing glances at Lynn, looking as comfortable as an insect on a pin.
‘He’s a great little chap,’ he said, nodding towards Simon, still happy in the pool with Graham.
Anthony was evidently itching to get away. ‘Right, we’ll be off, then,’ he said, as soon as the girls had their shoes on.
‘No taxi?’ Lynn asked.
‘No need, we’re turning into landlubbers. We’ve been ashore so long we’ve got time to bus it everywhere.’
Alec turned as they walked away. Their eyes met and he waved a goodbye. Lynn returned his wave, thinking she’d never seen a man look so despondent – probably the result of bumping into your old love just as you’re getting on with the new, she imagined. They were probably going to drop the girls off, and then they’d be out as a foursome for a meal at the King Edward, or Hammonds or somewhere else, and tomorrow, Bank Holiday Monday, they’d be having a day out – while she was at work, she thought, bitterly.
The bench that Orla and Brenda had vacated was claimed by two other women. Lynn sank down beside them, feeling as if she’d been kicked in the stomach. She would never have believed it of Alec, never in a million years. And what had been the point of all that tripe that Brenda had told her, about him sailing on the Sprite? If he wanted to finish with her and take up with Orla, why couldn’t he have told her, straight out?
Simon had climbed out of the pool, and was running towards her, followed by Graham. Could he have an ice cream, please?
‘This is how families ought to be – together!’ Graham said, as they followed him to the ice-cream van. ‘Mandy was never the woman for me; not enough personality. I realised that the day you came home and tossed all her clothes out of the window. That’s my Lynn, I thought. What a woman!’
‘Huh! And you were hiding in the bloody bathroom with her,’ Lynn snorted. ‘I remember it well.’
‘And you nearly kicked the door in. I wouldn’t have dared come out!’ he laughed. ‘You’re magnificent when you’re angry.’
Lynn’s laugh was rather hollow. ‘Get lost, Graham,’ she said.
‘And then you went out and stamped on her watch.’
‘Did she ever send you the bill for that?’ Lynn asked. ‘I told her to.’
‘Yeah, you did, but I’ve never heard a thing from her since she went back to hubby.’ He turned to look at her, suddenly serious. ‘It’s over, Lynn. It’s over for good. I want my family back.’
For the rest of the day Lynn was everything that was wonderful, beautiful, witty, and amusing, by Graham’s account. She was constantly reminded of all the good times they’d had together, until his relentless flattery and boundless charm began to wear down her resistance. By the time he dropped them off at her mother’s Lynn was beginning to think that her feelings for Graham might not be quite dead, after all.
‘Boys need fathers, Lynn,�
�� he said, his eyes gazing soulfully into hers through the open car window. ‘They do better with two parents. They don’t need to be ping-ponging between the two. I made a terrible mistake, I admit, but there’s no need to turn it into a tragedy.’
Lynn had no intention of getting into that discussion. ‘Thanks for the lift, Graham,’ she said. ‘Come on, Simon.’
‘Bye, son,’ Graham said, as they walked to the door.
A mournful quality in his voice sent Simon dashing back to give him a farewell kiss. ‘Bye, Dad!’
‘Come on, Simon. He’s not going to Australia,’ she snapped, irritated by the way Graham was manipulating him.
‘Think about what I’ve said,’ Graham called after her, as they went inside.
She closed the door in turmoil, but a minute later Graham, and everything he had said slid out of her mind. It was filled with Alec, and the expression on his face as he’d turned and waved goodbye to her. She’d never thought him the sort of man who says things he doesn’t mean, the kind to make empty promises just to get a woman into bed. In spite of three weeks’ total neglect she could still hardly believe it, but the fact had to be faced – she wasn’t the great judge of character she’d imagined herself to be. She’d got Graham all wrong, and probably Alec as well. But if their love-affair was over, Alec was going to have to face her and spell it out, even if she had to go and hunt him down in his lodgings. He wasn’t going to get away with slinking off as if all those declarations of love and promises of marriage had never been made. He was going to have to face her, and explain himself.
‘Bank Holiday Monday tomorrow – I thought you’d be going out,’ Lynn remarked, when she came downstairs after putting Simon to bed, and saw Nina sitting on the settee watching television.
‘Not tonight,’ Nina said. ‘I fancy a night in.’
Lynn sank into an armchair.
‘Aren’t you going to get your books out?’
‘Not in the mood.’
‘What’s up with you? You look as if your dog just died.’
‘I’m just a bit tired, that’s all.’
They sat quietly together watching television, and at around ten o’clock Nina got up and made two mugs of cocoa. They sat sipping it like two old women – Lynn staring into her cup and musing about Alec.
‘Penny for your thoughts,’ her mother said.
‘They’re not worth it,’ she replied, and after a pause asked: ‘Do you think it’s possible to love two men? At the same time, I mean.’
‘I’m certain it is. People can have a dozen kids and love ’em all, so what’s the difference?’
‘What’s the difference? Between the love you feel for a man and the love you feel for a child? Massive, I’d say.’
‘Well, it’s not the same, obviously,’ Nina conceded, ‘but I reckon you can love two. Men seem to manage it, so why not us? Graham, for example. I reckon he still loved you even when he was carrying on with that Mandy.’
Lynn gave a grim little laugh. ‘She was just a “bit-on-the-side”, to use his own words. Nothing serious. Never meant anything, he said.’
‘She probably didn’t, or not much, anyway. He wouldn’t have put himself out to run to Leeds, and she’d soon have got fed up of traipsing here. If you’d never found out it would have died a death, and no harm done. What the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over.’
‘Reminds me of that toast my dad says they raise on the ships. “To wives and sweethearts . . .” ’
Nina raised her mug of cocoa and gave the traditional rejoinder: ‘ “May they never meet!” Too right. It causes some shit when they do, as we’ve seen.’
Chapter 23
Lynn went to confront Alec in his digs after her shift the following day. The landlady showed her into a drawing room smelling of polish and with a bright fire burning in the grate, where Alec sat at a dining table covered with a plush cloth, looking at maps and charts. He looked up, startled to see her there. The landlady shut the door and left them together.
Lynn pulled out a chair and sat down opposite him, looking him straight in the eye. ‘Remember me? Or have you had an attack of amnesia, these past few weeks?’
He held her gaze. ‘I’m never likely to forget you, Lynn.’
‘But you shot off to Fleetwood on your own, and you never once rang me or even dropped me a postcard for three weeks, and then the first I hear of you coming back to Hull is from Brenda, giving me some cock-and-bull story about you sailing on the Sprite – and a week later I see you out with Orla. Thanks a lot, Alec.’
‘I wasn’t out with Orla at all, and I was on the Sprite.’
‘A trip generally takes three weeks.’
‘It does unless one of the crew puts an axe through the hydraulics that control the steering gear. I’d heard it was an unlucky ship before we sailed, but I didn’t realise how bad it really was. We didn’t get past Scarborough because the ship wouldn’t answer the wheel, and to make matters worse we had no radar. We’d already called in at Grimsby to get that repaired, and it had gone again. So we were sitting in thick fog with no steering and no radar. The skipper had to ask another ship for a tow back to Hull; there was nothing else he could do. There’s going to be a court case about it.’
‘Speaking of court cases, have you forgotten my divorce? You seem to have lost interest in it. If you were going to finish it, you might have had the decency to tell me.’
His posture changed. Instead of sitting up straight and tall on his chair he slumped against it. ‘I didn’t know what I was going to do until I’d been in Fleetwood for a few days, and I thought you’d lost interest in the divorce yourself, the last couple of times I asked you about it. You’re still hankering after Graham, Lynn. You’re not really free.’
‘I soon will be.’
He grimaced and shook his head. ‘I don’t think we were ever destined to be more than friends.’
‘I’m not hankering after Graham,’ she insisted. ‘I know what’s wrong with you, though. It’s Simon. You’ve had a little think, and you’ve thought better of taking on the ready-made family.’
‘It’s not the ready-made family at all! Not the way you mean, anyway. I’ve got no objection to Simon, but I know how he’ll feel about me, because of the way I felt about my stepfather. All I ever wanted Jack to do was get lost, so my mam and dad could get back together. He probably wasn’t a bad feller looking back on it, but he could have been the best man ever born, and I still wouldn’t have wanted him near my mother. I wanted my dad. My own dad – and Simon’s the same.’
‘You got over it, and so would he.’
He leaned back in his chair to look at her. ‘Oh, Lynn – you’ve no idea! Kids don’t get over it, they put up with it – because they’re powerless to do anything else. I remember yelling when we were leaving our house for the last time: “I’m staying here!” But my dad was at sea, and I couldn’t stay there on my own so they had to drag me out, and I bore a grudge for years. Still do, truth be known. And that day I gave Simon a lift to his grandmother’s in the taxi – it took me right back to all that because he talked about his dad non-stop. “My mum and dad argue about me,” he said, “but they’re going to stop arguing and get back together, my dad says.” And I knew he was warning me off, just by the look in his eyes. It’s amazing what kids sense, and I thought: what am I doing? But I shoved it to the back of my mind. Then at the wedding – I mention his dad, and his face lights up! His eyes shine when he talks about him: my dad! I got a good idea what my stepfather must have felt like, then. Jack was never bad to me; I never had any reason to dislike him other than the fact he wrecked my family – and then he wanted me to call him Dad! It would have choked me – and the more he tried to be a substitute father, the more I resented him. I went to sea when I was fifteen, and I was glad to get out of the house. I don’t want Simon to feel like that about me.’
‘You saw the way Graham treated Simon in York. Call that a father?’
‘I saw him at the p
ark as well, larking about with him in the paddling pool with you walking along beside them, and you looked happy together. Graham’s the one that Simon wants, and Lynn, I honestly don’t think you know which way to jump. Well, I went to Fleetwood on my own, and I stayed with my mother and stepfather, and I remembered just the way it used to be. So I decided to stay right out of the way for long enough to see what would happen – and what happened was that when I came back you were together in the park, playing happy families. So that was that.’
‘We weren’t playing happy families at all. I went to the park with them because Simon pestered me to go, that’s all.’
‘You all looked happy enough together, anyway. It’s a serious thing to break a family up, Lynn. I don’t want to be the one to do it. I don’t know how I could ever have thought of it.’
‘The family’s already broken up, and he’s the one that did it, not you or me.’
‘And now he’s trying to put it all back together, and I shouldn’t get in the way of that, and I think it’s what you want as well, deep down. So I’m getting out of the way.’
‘That’s just excuses. You’re the one I want, and you know it.’
‘But you’re torn. You haven’t got him out of your system, even if you think you have, so I’m bowing out. Don’t make it harder than it is, Lynn.’
He was just making excuses, she thought, trying to put the blame on her, when in reality he was the one desperate to finish it, and clear the way for the Chief Bridesmaid. ‘It’s Orla, then,’ she said.
Alec looked wretched. He shrugged and spread his hands, palms upwards as if to say: I can’t help it!
It was Orla, without a doubt. Lynn stood up. ‘Bye, then, Alec.’
She loved him, but she wouldn’t humiliate herself by begging. Clutching on to the rags of her self-esteem she turned and left, and managed to keep her head up and her back straight until she was out of the door and away down to Janet’s to lick her wounds – desperate for a fag and a friend.
‘Your Anthony’s shipmate! You’re a dark horse, aren’t you? I never realised you had designs on him. I knew you’d been out with him a time or two, but I’d no idea you were that keen.’
The Would-Be Wife Page 13