A Liverpool Song

by Ruth Hamilton

  He left them there to explore the old neighbourhood, because he wanted to get to a lecture. There was more planning going on. Groups of colleagues stopped talking whenever he was within earshot, so he knew that a plot was being concocted. There was to be no stag night, as half were working or on call, and they were probably targeting the wedding day, when most would be available. Fortunately, the bride had a sense of humour, as did her bridesmaid, though Andrew wouldn’t be surprised if Pam clouted a few heads.

  He found out no more. Even Tim, often called Timid, was giving away little or nothing. ‘I want you to look after Pam, Mary’s bridesmaid. She recently separated from her boyfriend, so she’ll value your company.’

  Tim blushed.

  Andrew hoped the poor lad wouldn’t go in for obs and gynae, as he would probably be permanently pink if he did. Pam was exactly what Timid needed, though she might just frighten him to death long before any relationship got the chance to develop. Oh well, never mind. Andrew was a bit oversized to play Cupid anyway.

  This was his last night as a free man. He and Stuart were to stay at Dad’s, while Mary, Mary’s parents, Andrew’s grandparents and Pam were across the road at Mother’s. It gave the two younger men the chance to catch up, as Andrew was too busy in hospitals to visit Bolton, while Stuart led the life of a typical writer, shut away for most of the time, buried in his work, unaware of life outside his narrow sphere. ‘So, you stood still long enough for a woman to catch you, eh?’

  ‘I caught her.’ And he reminded his friend and best man of the saga of the Beatles, the odd courtship, the attack by the ousted sailor.

  ‘Serious, then.’

  ‘Of course it’s serious. I wouldn’t be marrying her if it wasn’t. Though I suppose some people would view the relationship as lightweight, because we laugh a lot and pull each other to bits. But I haven’t wanted or needed anyone except her since that day in Mathew Street.’ He raised his glass. ‘To the Beatles.’

  ‘The Beatles and all who queue to scream and don’t listen to them.’

  ‘And how’s life with you?’ Andrew asked.

  Stuart shrugged. ‘I don’t really have a life. I live vicariously through my characters. I mean, where do I go to meet people? Am I supposed to stand outside the Swan Inn with a notice round my neck – I’m queer, anybody interested ?’

  ‘Oh, Stuart, use your loaf. Get to Manchester or Liverpool, do a pub crawl without getting blotto, and talk to people. You’ll know him when you meet him.’

  ‘Just stop it. All that gets you is a quick grope – might as well go cottaging and be arrested. The law will change – it has to – but I could be fifty by then. How far did Wolfenden get?’

  ‘Far enough to make intelligent people think. It’s brains, not knee-jerk reaction, that will bring a bit of sanity into the arena. Anyway, you’re supposed to be keeping me cheerful.’ A thought occurred. ‘When they make your film, you’ll meet all kinds of creative people.’

  ‘Oh, shut up and get the bloody dominoes out, Andy. It’s your big day tomorrow, and I’m happy for you. You know what I really envy? That you get to be a dad one day.’

  Andrew scattered dominoes. ‘I’ve scarcely thought about that. I suppose we will have kids at some stage, but for now she’s all I want. Can’t imagine life without her. Within an hour of meeting her, I knew. And that’s how it’ll be for you, mate. The only difference is gender, no kids, and don’t get caught while the bloody government’s still out at lunch.’

  Joe entered. ‘Dominoes? Hutch up and make room for an expert. You amateurs might as well lie down and play dead.’

  Joe was right. He beat them time after time, and was accused of cheating. During the fifth game, Joe responded to a knock at the door.

  ‘Hello,’ the two men heard him saying. ‘This way.’

  And in they came. Immediately, Andrew could tell that Dad and Stuart knew about the deadly plot, since they helped to hold him down while the incomers, all in white coats, bandaged him to the point of mummification. He was strapped to a stretcher and bundled into an ancient ambulance. The curtains in his other living room over Mother’s house twitched. Mary was in on it. They were all in on it. Somebody would pay for this.

  The pubs, too, must have been made aware. In each one, the medical perpetrators, all bedecked with stethoscopes, placed a coffin in a corner and stood Andrew in it. He was fed drinks via a plastic straw poked through bandages and, as he spat out most of the alcohol, the face, neck and chest areas were soon saturated.

  Eventually, he was released. Dad and Stuart unravelled him while the white-coated cowards picked up their coffin, dashed outside and drove off in the ambulance. ‘Dad, you will suffer for this,’ Andrew promised.

  Stuart smiled broadly. ‘I got Tim’s phone number,’ he said.

  Andrew, feeling foolish, blinked. It was supposed to be Pam and Tim, not Stuart and Tim. Mind, they all deserved to be confused after what they’d put the groom through, so he kept his mouth shut. Whatever happened tomorrow, they all bloody well deserved it. Yet he suddenly realized that he’d quite enjoyed being a mummy. A mummy got to observe life through a gap in bandages; a mummy didn’t need to do much. Stuart wanted to be a daddy, but— Inwardly, he told himself to shut up, because Stuart’s situation wasn’t funny.

  A thought occurred to Andrew. ‘Where the hell are we?’

  ‘Your carriage awaits,’ Joe said.

  It did. Two funereal black horses with plumes waited outside the pub. Regulars, definitely under instruction, covered Andrew, Stuart and Joe in confetti. The black-hatted driver took no notice whatsoever while his three multi-coloured passengers climbed aboard. Passers-by laughed. There was more to this than met the three men’s eyes. Andrew asked the driver to wait, climbed down, and walked to the rear of the vehicle. CONDEMNED MAN ON WAY TO WEDLOCK the sign said.

  ‘Oh well, true enough,’ he said before returning to his seat.

  Wherever they’d been abandoned was some distance from Rodney Street. They were driven past the Liver Building and right through Liverpool’s centre while crowds of Friday-night revellers pointed and laughed. Andrew, who had decided to be regal, waved a hand at his various audiences. Faculty of Medicine? It was more like a training ground for clowns.

  At last, they arrived in Rodney Street. Curtains at all levels moved in Mother’s house. He imagined Mary and Pam in cahoots with the lunatics who had kidnapped him, the lot of them in a huddle in a canteen planning the stag night that wasn’t supposed to happen. After climbing down, he made a Shakespearean bow in the middle of the road. Now she would know that he’d guessed who was at the back of this plot. How would he punish her? Bandages? No. He’d bide his time and get her when she felt safe.

  Joe put away the dominoes. ‘Well, lad, they got you good and proper.’

  ‘They did. But I’m the one attached to a consultant already. They’ll be lucky if they get to wash pots in the canteen. Anyone for brandy?’

  Joe went to bed, leaving the two old pals together.

  ‘We call him Timid,’ Andrew said.

  ‘He’s not. I’ve invited him to New Moon, if that’s all right with you.’

  ‘Of course.’ He said nothing about Pam and the plan he’d arranged for her and Tim to be thrown together at the wedding party.

  ‘He’s a decent bloke,’ Stuart said.

  ‘He is. Very shy, though. As far as I know, he’s going to train for general practice. Is he the one?’

  Stuart doubted it, and said so. ‘Like you so-called normal folk, we have to kiss a few frogs before we meet our prince. You made a lovely mummy, by the way.’

  ‘So pleased.’ The groom drained his brandy globe. ‘Right, time for bed, old chap. You’re in the spare room up in the gods.’

  Stuart stood up. ‘Are you nervous?’

  ‘No. Tomorrow’s the first day of my real life. But she’ll be punished. If I have to wait a month, I’ll make her pay. She was at the back of tonight.’

  ‘Are you sure?’


  ‘Oh yes. It definitely had her golden touch.’

  The golden touch was very clearly in evidence on the wedding day. Mary’s dress, as simple and unadorned as most of her wardrobe, was pale gold, while her hair was bound close to her head in a plait encircling her skull, with the same pale gold material threaded through to form the edge of this Juliet cap-style of hairdo. Escaping tendrils made her look angelic. She was not angelic, Andrew reminded himself.

  Pam, blonde and in a much darker gold, was also stunning. All flowers were white with green foliage, and everyone in the register office inhaled sharply when they saw Mary on her father’s arm, Pam close behind. No one could deny that these two young women looked beautiful despite the absence of buttons, bows and lace.

  ‘She has good taste,’ Emily whispered to Geoff.

  Enid, on the bride’s side of the room, wiped away a tear. Her little girl was gorgeous, and she was marrying a lovely man, a doctor who was going to be a surgeon. Enid’s cup ran over, so Bert passed her his handkerchief. ‘Here, love, don’t spoil your make-up.’

  Andrew reached out his hand. ‘Hello, beautiful,’ he whispered.

  The registrar went through the rigmarole, the happy couple said their bit, and it was over. They walked out to a guard of honour consisting of last night’s miscreants, who made a corridor of plastic femurs under which man and wife had to walk. As they stepped forward, the femur-bearers sang, ‘Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones.’

  Once all the photographs were done and Mary had thrown her bouquet, the party repaired to Rodney Street, since they had two houses to choose from, and the wedding had been kept small. Andrew noticed Pam hanging round near Tim, who was hanging round near Stuart, but he said nothing.

  ‘How was your stag night?’ Mary asked, a layer of innocence coating the words.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I asked about your stag night.’

  He pondered. ‘I didn’t have one. You knew I wasn’t having one.’

  She looked at her feet. ‘Oh. I thought I saw you going out.’

  ‘And you saw me coming back. I even bowed to the gallery.’

  ‘So you did have a stag night?’

  ‘No. I was kidnapped, mummified, manhandled, half drowned in beer, placed in a coffin and brought home in the nearest thing to a hearse I ever saw. For all of the above, you will be punished.’

  The best man rattled a spoon in an empty glass. ‘Order in court,’ he shouted.

  Finger foods were put down or eaten hastily.

  Stuart cleared his throat. ‘Will the accused join me here? Andrew and Mary? Thank you.’ He placed them in chairs and stood between them. ‘I have known Andrew since we were three years old, and he’s been a very good friend. He paid me to say that, but he didn’t pay me enough. He was OK, I suppose.’

  Andrew picked up his chair, walked round the best man and sat with Mary. ‘I’m on her side,’ he said.

  Stuart shook his head sadly. ‘After what she organized last night, I was opening divorce proceedings here. So you’re standing by her?’

  ‘Sitting, actually.’

  Stuart made notes. ‘Signs of mental impairment,’ he quoted. ‘There was a plan, so I am told, to put Andrew on the Isle of Man ferry and abandon him to the vagaries of the Irish Sea. Fortunately, the ferry was not in dock, though this young woman stands – sits – in dock accused of a heinous crime against the bridegroom, Andrew Winston Sanderson.’

  ‘I am not Winston,’ Andrew shouted.

  ‘For the duration of this flaming speech, you are what I say you are. In so far as Mary Florence Nightingale Collins of no fixed abode did take it upon herself to have Andrew Winston Sanderson kidnapped, contained in a coffin and paraded through the streets of Liverpool, I put it to you, ladies and gentlemen, that she is unfit to be his wife.’

  Mary stood up; Andrew pulled her back into the chair. ‘Behave yourself,’ he said.

  ‘I have access to poisons,’ she yelled.

  Another note was made. Stuart read aloud, ‘Threats against my bodily integrity have been made by the bride.’

  It was all downhill from there. Whatever Stuart said, the bride or the groom topped it. Accusations and counter-accusations abounded, and the best man’s speech ended when the groom shoved a large vol au vent in Stuart’s mouth.

  He spoke to the assembly. ‘This has been my best wedding so far. I thank Pam for getting my wife to the register office sober, and Stuart for being the worst best man in history. To my colleagues I say wait till you need a bone mending, because you’ll get no help from me.

  ‘Mother and Dad, thanks for having me. Enid and Bert, thanks for having Mary, and does she come with instructions and a guarantee? Grandma and Grandpa, you know we all love you. I thank my wife for marrying me, my stepfather for helping me with my studies and being a good bloke, and I can’t finish without warning you all about playing dominoes with Joe, my dad. He cheats.

  ‘Mary and I are off to honeymoon in Cornwall while her parents stay here for a few days. Thank you all for coming; we’re going.’ He lifted Mary and carried her out of the room. ‘You are in so much trouble,’ he whispered. ‘I’m going to put you over my knee and—’

  She placed a forefinger on his lips. ‘Don’t get me excited. Not yet.’

  It was dark when they reached Mary’s parents’ home between Padstow and Bodmin. Andrew parked the car, remarked unnecessarily that they were in the middle of nowhere and, after walking round the vehicle, picked up his girl yet again. He set her down, took a huge key from a pocket, and opened the door of Gamekeeper Cottage. Then he hoisted her up once more and carried her over the threshold. ‘Are you gaining weight?’ he asked.

  ‘Are you losing strength, Drew?’

  When their eyes had adjusted, Mary was dumped without ceremony on a sofa while Andrew lit candles and oil lamps. The whole downstairs was one large room, kitchen and sitting areas jumbled together. A wood-burning fireplace fuelled the oven, while a blackened kettle sat on a grill that straddled the grate. ‘Cooking in the height of summer must be a chore,’ Andrew commented.

  ‘And there’s a cesspit,’ Mary informed him. ‘They grow vegetables well away from that, and buy meat, flour and dairy produce from a farm on the edge of Bodmin Moor. See the bulgy bit with a door at the other side of the fire? That’s the bread oven. They’re so happy, Drew. They own a few acres, so Dad’s going to get a couple of greenhouses for growing tomatoes and the like.’

  ‘Will they sell the produce?’

  ‘Oh yes. Once they have a horse and cart, they’ll go to markets and make a few bob. My parents don’t understand a life without work in it.’ She stood up. ‘In the morning, I’ll show you Dad’s answer to summer cooking. He’s made a grill thing. They cook outdoors. Come on, wedding night things to do.’

  Upstairs, there was just one bedroom and a very basic bathroom. Andrew wondered whether his Mary’s parents ever missed the bustle of Paddy’s Market and Scotland Road. He looked at photographs on the walls. ‘Here you are, Mary. You were a beautiful child.’

  ‘Yes, I was, but that’s our Audrey. There’s Shirley, and that’s me.’

  ‘The baby.’

  ‘Yes. And over there are the boys, Bernard, Peter and Chris. God alone knows where they are now.’

  They undressed and climbed into a high but comfortable bed. ‘Do you know how much I love you, Mrs Sanderson?’

  ‘No. But if it’s half as much as I love you, it will be a pain.’

  ‘Semper fidelis,’ he said.

  ‘Amen.’

  Thus they began their married life in the middle of a wilderness, with primitive cooking facilities, no real bathroom, tinned food left by Mary’s parents, foxes barking in the night, trees rustling all round, milk, cream, butter, bread, eggs and cheese left on their doorstep with a greetings card from the local farmer. Again, it was one of those glorious times made special because it was not running quite to plan. Always, they would value most the things that went wrong or didn’t come up to scra
tch, since they needed only each other.

  They were young, healthy and full of hope. They went to the sea, splashed about among rocks, found crabs, collected shells and pebbles, made love in woods while smaller mortals rustled in nearby foliage. They lay in inky blackness and stared up at a sky in which a million stars came out to look at them. They had candyfloss, ice cream, and other delights that took them back to childhood.

  ‘We have to be grown-ups when we get home,’ Mary said on their last night in Cornwall.

  Andrew disagreed completely. ‘No, no. At work, perhaps. But at home, we can go with Wilfred Owen, forever children, hand in hand. The sea is rising and the world is sand.’

  ‘What does that mean, Drew?’

  ‘No idea. I pinched it off Geoff; it’s his mantra. But it sounds impressive. A bit soggy, what with the sea rising, but very clever. I’ll look it up when we get home.’

  Fourteen

  The problem had been contained successfully for several years in the chaos room before spreading small tentacles across other parts of the house. Geoff was an untidy soul, and Emily had known that right from the very beginning when he’d taken her to his home and made love to her for the first time. She closed her eyes for a moment, saw his flat with the desk shoved against the window, nowhere to sit because books and papers occupied every bit of furniture. Not the bed, though. Oh, he’d known that she needed him . . . Come back to me, please, my darling man. Always, he’d been different, special and rather eccentric. But . . .

  This was different, and she became disturbed, then tense, finally landing at the edge of panic and despair just before Andrew’s marriage to the lovely Mary. But everything had to look right for Andrew and his bride, so she said nothing, simply returning to Geoff ’s messy room all the clutter he was spreading through communal areas. Keeping up with him was difficult, but she managed, more or less, to hide from other people the various overspills her man was creating.

  Several hidden items began to turn up in very odd places. She found pages torn from medical books, certain words ringed by coloured inks. Childhood cancers in particular found space in his socks and pants drawer, while a three-page treatise on the subject of cerebral palsy appeared in a leather pouch right at the bottom of a dirty-linen hamper. And she stood there holding this in her hand, hearing him telling her that she would go to him willingly for sex. ‘Come to me. I love you,’ he had said. Oh, Geoff, Geoff, where are you, where did you go? What’s happening to us? They’d been happy, so happy. Was this a punishment because she’d abandoned Joseph? ‘Then punish me, not him,’ she muttered.