A Liverpool Song

by Ruth Hamilton

On their way homeward, the rear-seat passenger commented on everything she saw, from shops to unusual buildings. When they reached their destination, she was overawed. ‘I never knew you lived at the seaside with sand and everything. Ooh, it’s lovely here, it is. Grand.’

  Andrew explained that this was the river, and that the bar was nearer to Formby.

  ‘Is it open, this bar?’

  He chuckled. ‘The bar’s invisible.’

  ‘Right. Does it serve h-invisible Guinness?’

  ‘Thora, the bar is where the river becomes the Irish Sea. It’s just a word, not a pub on a boat.’

  ‘Ooh, and there I were getting excited. Is . . . er . . . is this your house?’

  ‘It is.’

  ‘It’s a bloody mansion. Get me in there.’

  They allowed her to take herself on an unguided tour. Mary advised her husband that she was exhausted. ‘A full day with her and I’ll be joining your mother. Do her batteries ever run down?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why have you got so many bathrooms?’ The dulcet tones floated downstairs like a pound of lead on a string. ‘How many pees do you go for at once? There’s only two of you. Ooh!’

  ‘She’s found our bedroom,’ the couple chorused together.

  ‘Four-poster,’ she called. ‘And some very passionate colours. No wonder you’re in that state, missus. A room like this means trouble.’

  When Thora came down the staircase, she pretended to be a Hollywood star. ‘Tomorrow is another day,’ she announced just before reaching the hall. She curtseyed and looked round. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Fish and chip shop. We haven’t eaten.’

  They sat in the drawing room eating supper straight from the paper, though Mary did supply forks.

  ‘She’s posh,’ Thora commented on receipt of her cutlery. ‘Is this one of them there h-inglenook fireplaces?’

  Mary almost choked on a chip.

  ‘Yes.’ Andrew’s face never flickered. ‘It’s a h-inglenook. The man who built the house a hundred or so years ago was a very wealthy Liverpool merchant. Most of these places have been made into flats or offices, but we managed to save this one.’

  ‘It’s grand.’

  He agreed with her. ‘Dad and I have done a lot to it. We spend almost every weekend messing about with wood – when he’s at home, that is.’

  Thora screwed up her paper and belched loudly. ‘Better out than in,’ she declared by way of apology. ‘Now, Andy, tell me all about your mam, God love her.’

  So they explained at length and in detail about Geoff ’s suicide note, his death during the writing of it, the illness that had caused him and all who loved him so much misery. Thora learned about the dead child, Geoff’s suspension, his decline, his intention to drown himself in the Mersey.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Thora breathed. ‘He were a gradely doctor.’

  ‘He was,’ Mary agreed. ‘Till he got ill.’

  ‘My mother took an overdose,’ Andrew said. ‘Enough to kill, though we found her just in time. Before that, she’d lost interest. Mary and another woman used to give her a bath and change her clothes. And she almost needed force-feeding. It’s over two years now.’

  For once in her life, Thora was quiet.

  ‘Cup of tea?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Shush while I think about Emily.’ Thora thought about Emily, a good mother, good worker, great housekeeper. But she’d always had a funny bone, a tendency to laugh when something amusing came up, like a dog tearing out of the butcher’s with half a dead pig, or Thora’s lads coming home covered in most of the mud from the bottom of the Croal.

  Andrew crept out to make tea. ‘There you go, Thora.’

  ‘What? Oh, ta.’ She took the cup. ‘Emily were so kind. I weren’t. Never been kind, me. And when she met Geoff, she blossomed like one of them apple trees in spring. She had her teenage years in her forties. But she lived for him, you see, and that’s what’s at the bottom of it, and I suppose you already know it. So if you can’t drag her out of the full stop, how can I? The world without him in it is something she doesn’t want. I can’t bring him back, Andy.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘But I’ll do me best with her.’

  ‘I know that, too. And something else – you’re a liar, because you’re one of the kindest people I’ve met.’

  Thora sniffed. ‘She and Joe gave me that house. And you say she’s been in and out of the loony bin for two years?’

  Mary nodded. ‘It’s been hard on Joe and on Drew.’

  ‘And there’s been no improvement?’

  ‘None at all,’ Andrew said. ‘She’s like a puppet or a robot, sits on her bed, sits on her easy chair, sits at the table in the middle of the room, eats, goes to the bathroom, goes to bed.’

  ‘Not much of a bloody life, that, Andy. Right. Get me to this here bungalow so I can see what’s what.’

  They showed her what was what and furnished her with the makings of breakfast. ‘Joe lives next door,’ Mary told her. ‘But he’s off in the Midlands again expanding his empire. He’ll be back soon.’

  Thora asked about Toodles, and was sad to hear that she’d gone to the big scratching post in the sky. ‘Well, you get off now. I’ll watch a bit of telly and get myself to bed. There’s thinking to be done.’

  She did her thinking aloud, of course. ‘So Joe’s thrown in the towel and said she can be plugged into the electrickery. She’s not a bloody iron or a lamp, and I’ve never known that ECT to do anybody any good. I mean, look at her opposite with agora-wotsit. It never worked on her, did it? Mind, they had to drag her screaming through her front door.’

  She made herself a jam sandwich and a pot of tea. Sweet stuff always helped when it came to thinking. ‘I wonder what the hell I’m supposed to be? A miracle? No idea what difference I’ll make just by turning up out of the blue. It’s a nice bungalow, is this.’

  There was a photograph of Emily with Joe and Geoff. It sat on the mantelpiece with a clock and a couple of ornaments. The relationship between Emily and her two men had been a rum do and no mistake. What a mess.

  On a corner cupboard stood an ornate box with Geoff ’s name carved into its surface. ‘So she brought you home, eh, lad? Eeh, she loved you. She walked different, with what they call a spring in her step. I knew it had to be the other – you know – sex and all that. But it were more than sex. Aye, she loved thee more than any man has a right to be loved, and it’s damned near finished her. Can you help me, son? Can you show me what I must do to get her started up again?’

  She slept fitfully. Geoff was in the dream. ‘Don’t forget the bourbons. Thora loves bourbons.’ Then Emily was there making tea, bringing it to the table with biscuits on a plate, a little doily between the china and the food. ‘Where’s me bourbons?’ Thora heard herself ask.

  ‘She has to have bourbons,’ Geoff shouted.

  Thora woke. She could hear the second syllable of the word echoing through the bungalow. Perhaps she hadn’t been quite awake, but she could almost feel a presence in the bedroom. This was daft. ‘Who’s there?’ she asked quietly. Of course, there was no reply. ‘Hello?’

  She got out of bed and went to the kitchen for a drink of water. Having been in the room earlier, she knew exactly how she’d left it. What she saw in there she would never forget, nor would she speak of it, because people might think her mad. On a tray near the kettle she had used was an empty packet that advertised its used-up contents. Bourbon cream biscuits.

  Thora Caldwell was not easily fazed. When it came to faith, she was of the live-and-let-live school, but she believed her own eyes and was confident where her memory was concerned. The power of love. Her eyes leaked saline not because she was afraid of spirits, but because she wondered at the trouble that had been taken tonight to show her how to begin breaking into Emily’s locked mind.

  She had her drink of water, picked up the empty packet and carried it to the living room. ‘Thanks, Geoff,’ she said to the urn. ‘Just so you know
I found it and I will do my best, I promise you. You know I won’t let you down, lad. More to the point, I won’t let Emily down.’

  The windows were closed, and there was no wind, yet the curtains moved. In that moment, Thora decided to return to Catholicism. There was a God. There was another step taken after death, and Geoff had managed to come back for Emily’s sake. So that was the power of love, a love Thora had never known.

  She stayed where she was to keep Geoff company. Stretched out on the sofa, she slept dreamlessly, waking in the morning strangely calm and peaceful. She sat up, stretched, rubbed her eyes and looked round. The biscuit packet had gone.

  Thora wrote the script and presented it to Mary and Andrew. ‘It’s like a play,’ she explained. ‘I were sat there all day writing it, and I’m no good at spelling, so put up with it. See? I’ve even done a title. The Case of the Bourbon Cream.’

  Andrew stared hard at his ex-next door neighbour. ‘What are you going on about, Thora? If you’re Sherlock Holmes, who’s Watson?’

  She snatched back her work. ‘Not you, for a kick-off. I’d sooner have somebody what takes me serious. I’ll have to hire a proper h-actor.’

  ‘You can have Mary, but she can only do Humpty Dumpty or Snow White’s eighth dwarf, Fatty.’

  Thora sat down and glared at her small audience. ‘Bleeding pathetic,’ she accused them. ‘Is your mother certified at the moment? Or is she a voluntary patient?’ These words were separated, as if spoken to someone with limited auditory comprehension.

  ‘She’s nominally voluntary, since she’s not dangerous, but we do the volunteering, because she never says a word.’

  Thora sniffed. Her sniffs were legendary, and they meant she was a long way from best pleased. ‘Get her home. Stick her in that bungalow and I’ll barge in, just like I used to do on Mornington Road. I’ll supply the biscuits, plus a few tales about my dear departed what should have departed long before he got round to it. If I have to bloody sit on her, she’ll listen to me, damn it all.’

  Andrew explained that in his opinion, although Emily seemed to notice very little, she was completely institutionalized. She knew the rhythm of her day, of the ward, of the staff. She was told what to do, and she did it. At home, everything had to be done for her.

  ‘Then let me be the doer. I’ll shift the bugger.’

  ‘She’s not a bugger,’ Andrew said.

  ‘No, but her illness is. It wants shifting. And I’ll bet you they’ve give her no exercise, which she will be needing to build herself up, like.’

  He had to agree with that. Thora had clearly managed to separate Mother from the mental illness, and she was intending to kill the latter and save the former. ‘What do I have to say?’

  ‘It’s not as if I’ve give you one of them monolog-yous. If you fetch her home, tell her Thora’s waiting for a brew, then keep mentioning me on the way back in the car. Tell her Bertha’s piles have come back. Tell her Margaret Wilson’s got dry rot and her hair’s falling out. Oh, and Margaret’s Bernard got rid of all his teeth and had a new bathroom put in.’

  Mary was in pain. ‘Stop it, Thora. I don’t want to give birth just now.’

  ‘Suck it back in. That’s what I had to do with one of mine. I sat on his head for half an hour, cos I’d paid to see Gone with the Wind, and I weren’t missing the end.’

  Mary wiped her eyes. ‘Weren’t you in pain?’

  ‘Listen, love. There were more pain at conception than there were at birth. He were no good at owt. Four years we had the New Testament propping the table up till Andy’s dad made us a new leg. Matthew’s gospel has no chance at all, because there’s a hole through his middle at the start, and he’s a bit dented right through. My hubby were a drunken bastard son of an Irishman on his way to Appleby for the horse sale. They had a whirlwind romance, him and Harry’s mam, and Harry were the result. Whirlwind? She birthed a tycoon.’

  ‘Typhoon?’ Andrew suggested.

  ‘Yes, that and all. The only thing as made him quiet were drink. And the drink made him permanently quiet and all. Oh, I’ve a lot to be grateful for. I think them as makes Guinness should get a Blue Peter badge off that kiddies’ programme. Any road, I’m going to give the bungalow a good seeing to, bit of weeding, polish her furniture, get the Hoover out. I’ll leave you this.’ She tossed her script onto the coffee table. ‘I’m going.’

  She went, but came back immediately. ‘Andy?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did she cry when Geoff died?’

  He thought about that. ‘Not really. She howled like an angry wolf. At the funeral, she simply looked through people. Even his parents couldn’t get a reaction from her. And she just retreated inside herself, didn’t want anyone or anything. I know this is going to sound daft, but I sometimes think she’s with him, but she left her body behind.’

  It didn’t sound daft to Thora. It was nowhere near as daft as what she’d been through last night, biscuit packet, curtains and talking to an urn full of ash and splinters of bone. But she kept that to herself. ‘I think you might be right, Andy. They were inseparable.’ She paused. ‘You two are the same. No way would you manage apart,’ she prophesied before leaving again.

  Mary blinked back some unexpected tears. ‘She’s right, Drew.’

  ‘I know. Goes a long way past sex and splintery banisters, doesn’t it?’

  She nodded. ‘If Emily and Geoff had half of what we have in each other, the loss must have devastated her. And we knew that already, but Thora is so perceptive. How does she know all that?’

  ‘A bad marriage. She managed to position herself on the outside of her own experience and watch other people. The jokes are part of her method. She could probably break through concrete with a sewing needle.’

  ‘She’ll need to, darling.’

  ‘I know.’ He sighed deeply. ‘But if anyone can, it’s Thora.’

  The phone rang. Thora lifted the receiver. ‘Yes? Who’s that then?’

  ‘It’s me. Andrew. Something’s happened, Thora.’

  She pressed a hand against her chest. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Hospital. Mother’s hospital. She spoke, Thora. She spoke. I’m coming home, and she’ll be home in a few days.’

  ‘Well thanks for the near heart attack. But she’s not coming today?’

  ‘No. I’ll tell you when I get back.’

  Thora picked up two bourbons and ate them before replacing the rest in Emily’s biscuit barrel. She’d got the place all nice, fresh flowers, a pretty little lamp to shine on Geoff’s urn, a new rug, some cushions with fringes on the seams. ‘Never mind, old lad,’ she told Geoff ’s ashes. ‘She’ll be back soon.’

  Andrew arrived.

  ‘Well?’ Thora thrust a cup of tea at him. ‘What’s going on?’

  He explained that he couldn’t stay long, as Mary needed driving home. ‘She’s at Pam’s. I don’t like to leave her for too long, because she lost our first about three years ago. Anyway, back to Mother. It all happened round midnight the night before last.’

  ‘The night I arrived?’

  ‘That’s the one. According to the duty sister, Mother sat bolt upright and screamed Geoff ’s name.’

  Thora swallowed hard. He’d been here at midnight, too, messing about with biscuit packaging and curtains, but she wasn’t going to say anything. ‘I wonder why?’ she said. ‘And did she talk to you?’

  ‘She whispered. She sounds like a hinge wanting oil. I suppose her vocal cords have slackened off over the years. But she’s had electro-convulsive therapy. If she comes home, she’ll have to go back four times as a day patient to finish the course. It may be barbaric, but it seems to be working.’

  ‘What did she whisper, Andy?’

  ‘She told me Geoff had been to see her and she had a headache. The headache would be from the ECT. And her face is less lined. She looked more like her old self, thank goodness. So.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’d better go and get Dumpling from Pam’s. You will stay, won’t you? The
staff will be bringing her home.’

  ‘You know I’ll stay with her. Go on. Get your wife while I . . .’ No, she couldn’t tell him she was going to talk to an urn, could she? ‘While I have a nice long bath. See you tomorrow, love. So glad she’s on the mend.’

  Andrew went off to retrieve his beloved.

  Thora picked up Geoff and carried him to the table. She spread a tea towel, then took a baby’s soft toothbrush to get any bits and pieces of dust out of the ornate carving of the outer container. ‘You must look your best for Emily. Do you remember that navy skirt? Pencil, the style were called. A split up the back where you could see a bit of navy lace on her underskirt. And her hair, Geoff. Like satin. And there was I stuck with horrible ginger curls. Eeh, I wish I could have looked like her for a few days.’

  She applied beeswax and rubbed it in. ‘And she give me a fair ear’ole rattling when I talked about you and her. There were strength in her, but so gentle in her ways, you’d never have guessed. Thing is, lad, you and I know you’re round and about looking after her, but we have to let folk think the electrickery worked. Cos I don’t want to end up in a padded room, and you don’t want to get yourself exorcised.’

  Something feather-soft touched the nape of her neck, and she laughed. ‘Don’t play tricks on me, Geoff. And go easy on Emily, too, because we want her sane. If she starts telling everyone you’re here, she’ll be judged crackers all over again, and that’s not what we want. You’ll have to keep your distance.’

  Joe would be home any day. There was something solid about Joe, something dependable. She grinned. ‘Joe’s solid, and you’re not, Dr Shaw. Emily will lean on him, and he won’t fall over. Go back, hon. Go where you should be and let us get on with mending Emily. She loves you. She’ll be with you one day.’

  After she’d said all that, she suddenly felt alone and abandoned. But she had done and said the right thing, because Emily was here and now in bodily form, and he wasn’t. Thora didn’t pretend to understand the hereafter, but she knew it was supposed to be a state, a condition rather than a place. There was no time, no today, no tomorrow, so how Geoff had managed to come back would always be a mystery. She would pray for him. She would get her priest to pray for him, once she found a priest.