He cleared his throat, since some reply seemed to be expected of him. ‘I don’t quite understand what yer on about? I’m quite comfortable.’
‘You can’t possibly be comfortable. You can’t spend all winter living in that hut,’ Mavis snapped. ‘It wouldn’t be right. And what will folk think?’
‘Folk can think what they like, I don’t much care. And it’s a shed.’
Mavis glowered, but seeing that she was making no progress she remembered how she’d promised herself to be patient with him, how strangely silent the house was without him. There seemed no purpose to her life any more, no focal point to her day without a husband to cook for, or tidy up after. She even resented the fact that her daughter-in-law was doing his washing for him.
However infuriating Thomas might be, he was still her husband. They were man and wife, bound together through life for better or for worse. And if she would have preferred a bit more of the former and a bit less of the latter, well, that couldn’t be helped. It was a wife’s duty to grin and bear her lot, whatever that might be. But she couldn’t bear the silence of waking up alone in that house any more, that was certain
She reasserted the smile. ‘It’ll do your chest no good at all. You’ll get bronchitis again.’
‘I might, I might not. I’m sure I can cope. Anyroad, I’m staying put.’
Now she was deeply troubled, for he didn’t seem in the least concerned. What on earth could she say to persuade the daft fool to see the error of his ways if he didn’t care about the gossip permeating through the market about their quarrel, nor even about his own health?
But Mavis knew well enough who to blame for this state of affairs, this late rebellion in her normally docile husband.
‘Staying put indeed. We shall see about that,’ she said, putting away her handkerchief and closing her handbag with a loud click.
Belle Garside was talking to Sam Beckett from the ironmongery stall while he ate his egg and bacon breakfast. She had her arms folded, pushing up her magnificent breasts above the low-necked blouse she wore. And while she fluttered her eyelashes and flirted outrageously with him, as she so loved to do since Sam was a good looking bloke, she was keeping half an eye on the little scene taking place in the far corner.
Mavis had been aware of the other woman’s interest for some minutes, and, getting briskly to her feet, marched right over. ‘If you think I don’t know what’s been going on then you’ve another think coming. I’m no fool, so don’t take me for one.’
‘Excuse me?’ Belle said, confused by this unexpected attack, coming quite out of the blue.
‘It’s about time you got an husband of your own, if you can find one, instead of pinching other folks.’
Two swift steps took her behind the counter where a large pan of Heinz baked beans was bubbling on a small stove. Mavis grasped it with both hands and before anyone could stop her, deposited the entire contents on top of a range of apples pies, custard tarts and cream cakes set out on a glass shelf.
‘I’ll give you beans of toast,’ she said, thrusting the hot pan into Belle's trembling hands. ‘You’ll find your toast burned to a crisp if you ever lay one of those scarlet finger nails on my poor husband again.
‘And as for you,’ Mavis said, turning her ire on the man in question. ‘You can get off home this minute, you daft lummock, before I really lose my temper.’
‘By gum,’ Thomas said to the gaping diners. ‘What a woman!’
Amy couldn’t understand it. Mavis had changed. Her usual dour expression had vanished, her whole demeanour seemed to have been transformed from glum and over-critical to sunny and what could only be described as happy. Amy had never heard her mother-in-law singing before, but she did that all the time now as she hurried off to do her shopping following her usual daily visit. She’d even managed to sit for a whole half hour chatting without once finding fault. Amy wondered if she was ill, or if she was growing senile perhaps, as old folk often did.
But then she discovered that Thomas was happy too, and no longer living on the allotment.
‘What’s happened to your mother and father?’ she asked Chris one day. ‘Your mother’s like a dog with two tails. She came and collected all your father’s washing the other day and told me he was back home now and that she’d be doing it herself in future. Not only that, but, according to Thomas, she’s waiting on him hand, foot and finger, which she always said she’d never do. She’s even letting him watch football on the new telly. What’s going on?’
But Chris only grunted from beneath lowering brows, which was the biggest puzzle of all. While his parents seemed to have resolved their matrimonial difficulties, Amy discovered that she’d acquired a whole new raft of her own, and she couldn’t, for the life of her, understand why.
Chris had never been so unhappy in his life. It was all true, what that anonymous letter had said. Amy did indeed have a fancy man. He’d seen the bloke with his own eyes. But what should he do about it? Should he confront her and demand to know what was going on, or hope that it would all blow over and she’d come back to him?
And did he still want her if she’d betrayed him with another man? Chris groaned. What he wanted was for it not to be happening at all.
In the days following that dreadful discovery, he seemed to be walking around in a dream. He couldn’t concentrate on anything, couldn’t think. He certainly couldn’t talk to Amy properly, could hardly bear to even be in the same house with her. He would go and sit in the bakery in the dark, with his head in his hands in total despair, or go for long walks alone along the canal tow-path, talking to himself like a man demented.
Once or twice he’d caught her writing something but when he asked what it was, she’d pushed all the papers out of sight, flushing a guilty pink, which inflamed his suspicions still more. Was she writing him love letters too, on his kitchen table?
What should he do? What could he do if she no longer loved him?
And why was she doing this to him? Why had she done this terrible thing? That’s what he couldn’t work out. Why would she want to? What had gone so badly wrong with their marriage that she would even think to look at another bloke? He’d managed, albeit with difficulty, to provide her with a home of their own to live in, one he and his dad had done up and improved as best they could. Of course, he hoped to find her something a bit better one day, but at least they now had the privacy they’d always craved.
And they had little Danny. He worked hard, handed his money over every week, so where had he failed her?
Was it in the bedroom department? he wondered with a pinch of guilt. Amy was a lovely young woman with a healthy appetite for loving. Chris considered all the times when he’d put her off, when they’d been interrupted, even in their own home, by his mother.
Had he been wrong to allow Mavis to march in whenever she chose? Should he start locking the door? Should he tell his mother to knock, or to stay away altogether unless invited? Nay, that would cause ructions, yet more trouble just when his parents seemed to have patched up their differences.
Yet if he didn’t do something, he’d lose his lovely wife whom he adored.
She was always talking about politics and world affairs, teasing him because he didn’t join in her debates. Did she want him to be more a man of affairs? Chris wasn’t sure if he could manage that. He thought of the beatnik type clothes that she’d started to wear. Did she find him boring? Did she see him as dull and predictable?
And who was this other bloke, anyroad? That’s what he needed to know. Where had they met? They’d seemed very cosy together, really quite close, even intimate by the way he’d held her face and teasingly growled at her then ruffled her hair. The pain in Chris’s chest intensified, a physical band of iron clamping his heart.
Amy had betrayed him, cheated on him with another man.
He started, jerked out of his thoughts as Susie Southworth, the sixteen year old who served behind the counter in his baker’s shop came marching in with a mug of tea.
‘Morning, I thought you’d be gasping for a cuppa by this time,’ she said, rewarding Chris with her wide, beaming smile.
Susie was bright and cheerful and very pretty with fluffy blond hair and big blue eyes. As she set the mug down on the scarred surface of his desk, Chris allowed his gaze to travel over her neat little figure, her pretty face. She was wearing a tight-fitting white blouse which emphasised her pert young breasts, and a short black skirt beneath her apron that showed off a pair of shapely legs.
Maybe he should give Amy a bit of tit-for-tat. That would make her sorry. It had been a long time since he’d chatted up a girl, couldn’t ever remember needing to with Amy. They’d just fallen for each other on sight.
Chris smiled at the young girl. ‘You’re looking very pretty this morning, Susie.’
The girl looked slightly startled, saying nothing as she set down a plate of biscuits.
‘I expect you’ve got a boy friend. Several, I shouldn’t wonder, chasing after you,’ he added, giving her a broad wink.
She glanced at him sharply, sudden panic in her blue eyes. ‘Ooh, Mr George, I’m sorry Frank came round the other evening. He weren’t meaning to be no trouble. I’ve told him not to come near but he will insist on walking me home now the nights are drawing in.’
Chris was deeply embarrassed. She’d taken his little attempt at flirtation as some sort of criticism. ‘No, no, that’s not a problem. Quite right that he should walk you home when it’s going dark. I was just, well, I was simply making a compliment, that’s all. Thank you for the tea, Susie. Don’t worry about - about Frank. Get along with you now.’
And she fled. Chris put his head in his hands, his pride battered even more. Obviously the young girls who worked for him thought him too old and boring to see him as a man they might fancy. No wonder his wife was looking elsewhere.
Chapter Forty
There were days, like today, with its lowering skies and the threat of rain, when the market seemed perpetually dismal and dirty. The fish stalls stank, the walkways were littered with rubbish, the women appeared ugly in their thick coats and scarves, and the men rough and grimy. A scene which entirely suited everyone’s mood as Gina’s trial approached.
Some of the stallholders, like Jimmy Ramsay, Barry Holmes and Betty Hemley looked hollow-eyed and unusually bad-tempered, but then most of them had been on the go since the first flush of dawn, long before their customers even knew it was morning. Buying early was the only way to secure fresh produce at a good price.
Even Chris George looked like a man gone wild these days. Clearly young Danny was giving them precious little sleep.
Patsy too had suffered a sleepless night, several in fact, tormented by her suspicions, and whether she should mention them to Marc.
On impulse, she called to see Clara, her surrogate mother and business partner, and poured out her heart to her. Patsy spoke with anguish about the problems she and Marc had been experiencing recently. She also told how he kept asking her to look at flats with him but she was always too busy to go.
Clara listened carefully to this rush of confidences and smiled as she kissed Patsy’s cheek. ‘You’re very hard on yourself at times, love. You need to meet Marc half-way. Take more time off and give proper attention to your own personal life. It would be a mistake to take this nice young man for granted.’
‘You’re right, I know you are. He grumbles that we’ve lost the chance to rent two flats locally already because I wouldn’t take time off to look at them with him.’
‘There you are then. You have Amy coming in now, and I can help too.’
There was a small silence, then Patsy said, ‘One minute he’s trying to rush me into marriage and babies, the next he’s fretting over his sisters. It’s so difficult. But since we haven’t found anywhere to live, and there’s all this worry and fuss over Gina’s trial coming up, not forgetting Carmina’s wedding, I wonder if perhaps we should postpone our own for a while.’
‘You must discuss that with Marc, not me.’
Patsy chewed on her bottom lip. ‘The trouble is, marriage, babies and flats aren’t my only worry. I have serious doubts over this whole situation between Gina and Carmina. The question keeping me awake at night is whether I should voice my suspicions to Marc? He’s so infuriating, won’t hear a word said against her. Yet she’s evil, that girl, and I suspect she’s the one who has created this entire mess.’
Clara frowned. ‘I’m not sure I wish to hear this either.’
‘That’s all it is at this stage, a suspicion, a gut feeling which has grown while watching the way she behaves with certain people, one man in particular.’
Clara put up a hand. ‘Please don’t tell me who he is, I don’t want to know.’
‘All right, but tell me this. If you saw two people kissing, then the next minute she’s flirting outrageously with him while he’s finding any excuse to watch her, or be with her, isn’t that significant? And if they have a humdinger of a row, doesn’t that seem to prove that they must once have been very close? They say hate is very close to love.’
‘Leave it,’ Clara advised with a little shake of the head. ‘Say nothing. Let things be.’
‘Even if this whole shot-gun wedding thing is based on a lie? Even if Luc is innocent and losing him breaks Gina’s heart ?’ Patsy asked her adopted mother.
‘Even then. Concentrate on yourself, on your own future, Patsy, and leave the Bertalones to sort out their own problems. If you were to say something and Marc disagreed or took offence, you could lose him. You know how close that family is. He’d be bound to put them first, even the treacherous Carmina.’
Amy also agreed with Clara’s assessment of the situation when she and Patsy got together for their usual Friday afternoon chit-chat over coffee and cake in Belle's Café.
‘But what about justice for Gina?’ Patsy asked.
‘Leave that to the solicitors and her family.’
Mind your own business seemed to be the advice from her friends, which Patsy was beginning to get the feeling she must follow.
‘And pay more attention to your own life,’ her friend gently scolded her. ‘He’s a lovely man is Marc and, as Clara says, you don’t want to risk losing him. You can’t solve everybody’s problems, love, much as you might like to. Put yourself first for a change.’
Patsy thought of Gina, locked up in that prison cell and firmly shook her head. ‘I don’t see how I can do that until Gina is free.’
On Saturday afternoon Patsy finally, and reluctantly, agreed to close the hat stall early and go with Marc to view the new flats he’d mentioned, which were being built at Kersal. As they sat cosily side by side on the upper deck of the bus he told her they were going to be eleven storeys high. ‘How do you fancy that? You’d be able to see right over Manchester.’
She looked at him, an apology in her eyes. ‘I’d prefer to stay close to Champion Street and the market.’
‘You may change your mind when you see them.’
Patsy shifted her gaze to the wilderness of streets through which they were passing, trying to imagine travelling this journey every day. It did not appeal. Besides, she loved the hustle and bustle of the market, she always had. She couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.
‘Are there going to be shops too? If so, I suppose I could always try renting one of those and branch out a bit,’ she said, without too much enthusiasm.
‘I thought the idea was for you to take a break from work?’
Patsy said no more. They got off the bus and went to look at the flats, and the site for the shops, although it would be several months yet before they’d be completed.
‘Well?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t think so.’
Without a word they climbed back on to the next bus and returned to the city centre, getting off at Whitworth Street. They remained silent throughout the journey, seeming to have nothing left to say to each other. In deep gloom they crossed over Albion Street Road Bridge and
headed for the towpath, walking on past an old textile warehouse and Albion Mill with its façade of decorative cast iron window frames.
It was almost dusk and Patsy could hear the distant hum of city traffic, a clock striking the hour, and she couldn’t help but think of Gina and how each minute must feel like an hour to her. They made their way back towards Champion Street, bought fish and chips which they ate looking out over the Rochdale Canal, their own future suddenly seeming as bleak as the landscape.
Chris couldn’t quite pluck up the courage to confront Amy and tell her that he’d followed her and seen her with her fancy man. He hadn’t even mentioned the anonymous letter accusing her of cheating on him, and the reason for his reticence was perfectly simple. He was terrified of what her answer might be. He had no wish to hear her say the words that she no longer loved him, that she’d found someone else. Even to contemplate a life without his lovely wife was unendurable. But he couldn’t go on like this. He had to do something.
Unable to decide between his many possible choices, Chris opted for the lot.
His intention was to become a more dynamic, interesting person, particularly in the bedroom. At the same time he was so hurt, so angry by her betrayal, that he thought he might punish her by having a bit of a fling himself. Of course it was really Amy he wanted, not some other woman, but she clearly didn’t give a fig about their marriage vows and the love they’d once shared, so why should he?
All he had to do was spruce himself up and find a likely candidate, although he was a bit nervous about how he would proceed should he actually find one.
Chris began the new regime by telling his mother not to call at the house unless invited, indicating that they found it inconvenient having folk popping in and out whenever they fancied. And although her jaw dropped, she surprised him by making no real protest. In fact, she seemed far more interested in herself than her son, for once.
‘I’ve no time, anyroad, to be running round after you and Amy any more,’ as if she ever had done such a thing. More often than not it had been the reverse. ‘Your father and me are planning a little holiday, and then we have a few other plans on the go.’
Who's Sorry Now (2008) Page 32