A Liverpool Song

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Not till Christmas. Mum buys a couple of boxes then.’

  ‘Give me a chance, Kate. I enjoy your company. I shall disappear soon into the bowels of ancient Oxford, and I want you to miss me.’

  Kate was seldom stumped for words. She opened her mouth, but nothing emerged. It was all so surreal, almost like history repeating itself. Mum had gone out to see the Beatles at the Cavern, but she’d accidentally collected Dad instead. They’d tried to explain to her and Helen that it sometimes happened that way, but that it was rare and often just a passing fancy.

  ‘Lost for words, little one?’

  He made her feel special. Thus far, she’d felt special only in maths classes, where she left the rest of her fellows standing. ‘I’m not used to this sort of thing,’ she replied eventually. ‘This is Helen’s department. My brother and I try to keep her many admirers at bay.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘And I suppose you did return the tennis ball.’

  ‘I did.’

  Only then did they realize that the waltz had finished, that the DJ was playing pop, and that they stood out like a pair of statues among all the writhing bodies. ‘Shall we sit down?’ she mouthed over the cacophony.

  They sat at a safeish distance from the speakers. He continued to hold her hand, and she made no attempt to retrieve it. There was no one else in the room; everything melted away like snow in strong sunlight.

  ‘Your father and grandfather saved my life many years ago.’

  ‘Did you need a wooden leg?’

  It was Richard’s turn to be silent.

  ‘Granddad makes furniture and kitchens from wood, Rich. Your saviours were my dad and my grandmother’s lover.’

  ‘Whoa! How modern is your family?’

  ‘Very. I have an aunt in St Helens born out of wedlock. She’s my real grandfather’s illegitimate daughter. He now lives with a woman called Thora, though they don’t share a bed, or so I’m told. But my parents are monogamous.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘You’re an old-fashioned boy, then?’

  ‘Not a boy.’

  ‘You cross-dress?’

  ‘No. I’m a man, twenty next birthday. But the glandular fever, meningitis and recovery took a total of eighteen months all told. I lost time, forgot a lot of the stuff I’d known since infancy. I was a blank page. Catching up took a while, and my parents worried about brain damage.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘If you’ve chosen me, it could be a symptom. You clearly can’t tell the difference between gold and iron pyrites.’

  ‘But I know my little silver girl.’

  She blushed. Kate Sanderson never blushed.

  ‘Kate—’

  ‘I hope you’re not going to be a nuisance,’ she said before he managed to say anything more. ‘As things are, we may have to auction Helen to the highest bidder, because it’s all becoming tiresome.’

  Richard grinned. ‘What about the curtains?’

  ‘They’re not for sale.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘Neither is my virginity.’

  His reply almost floored her. ‘I’ve no intention of paying for it.’

  Goose pimples covered her arms; every tiny hair seemed to be standing to attention. So this was it, then. This was chemistry. But she didn’t remain fazed for long. ‘About that ball, Richard. ‘You can have it back and stick it where—’

  A speaker above their table suddenly came to life, belting out Michael Jackson at a level that was almost deafening. But he read her lips. She didn’t mince her ancient English, then . . .

  Eighteen

  Andrew Sanderson, sixty-one years of age and in several minds, stared hard and critically at his image in the cheval mirror. He was a man. He was a man well past his prime, but in spite of that fact he continued an adult human male. He had a full set of chisels, two pianos, four valuable cars, a macho-looking dog, enough spanners to service a fleet of taxis, two daughters, one son, six grandchildren, one headache and a few problems. He was being managed. Never since his years as apprentice to Compton-Gore had he felt so mithered. They were all watching him and no, this was not paranoia; he’d smoked no skunk since 1962 when a student known as Steve the Weed had been sent down for growing his own.

  Tired and worn down by the will and supposed wisdom of others, he had finally conceded and agreed to do their bidding. Strangely, all he had needed to do was nothing, because his superiors took silence to mean total submission. Females, self-elected presidents of the whole world, were drawing detailed maps and listing ingredients necessary to make his life enjoyable and fulfilling. Well, he was OK, and he wanted no changes for better or worse, yet here he stood like a shop-window dummy, because this was expected of him. Being in several minds was not suiting him in the slightest way. This, he supposed, was the definition of real confusion.

  He’d done hip replacements and knee surgery, mended countless numbers of limbs, invented a special fixing agent that most human bones found acceptable; he had met Her Majesty, had waded through blood and tissue after major road accidents, had even revived the dead, but he couldn’t deal with his own family. Perhaps he should invest in a gun or start slipping tranquillizers into their drinks.

  All dressed up in a good suit and crisp white shirt, he wondered what the hell he was up to. He knew very well what he was up to. No, he didn’t. Yes, he did. But why? Helen had pushed him along with a determination he’d never noticed before. Yes, he had. She’d been pretty stubborn while leaving Daniel Pope, and she was at it again, wasn’t she? Was she? Oh, what wouldn’t he give for a bit of quiet, the ability to finish a crossword, read a book, stand on his head in a corner should the need arise.

  Sarah, now in her third year, was a questioner. Why didn’t the sun fall out of the sky, did it hang on a string, how did birds fly, when would Cassie walk? Two-and-three-quarter-year-olds were supposed not to be so verbose, but she had to be the exception, of course. Cassie was a crawler. She got under everything, behind everything and inside a lot of things not suited to occupation by a quadruped child who was desperate to become a biped. As for their mother, well . . .

  Bloody interfering, meddlesome women. They rendered him perplexed, and made life unnecessarily complicated. Was he eating enough, shouldn’t he wear a heavier coat while walking on the beach, when was he due for a prostate examination, were his bowels behaving normally? They’d be checking his teeth next and making sure he wore a vest.

  Well, they’d gone too far this time. Should the revolution begin now, at this very moment? Where was Napoleon bloody Bonaparte when he was needed? Even Oliver Cromwell would have been a diversion, and he’d had warts and no discernible sense of humour whatsoever. Anyway, Andrew rather liked Queen Lilibet. He’d noticed how, while giving out medals and awards to total strangers, she kept alive the twinkle in her eyes, bless her.

  ‘Nope. Republicanism’s not my idea of the way forward. I’d better write to Buck House and Number Ten, get some help. The Duke of Edinburgh’s probably my best bet.’

  He sat on the bed. Kate was in on the plot, of that fact there could be no doubt. Anything out of flunter was usually connected to her, Chief Busybody and Chairperson of Organizers Unanimous. She was probably down the road with the second victim of the latest scheme. ‘I am allowing my daughters to orchestrate my life,’ he said aloud. ‘They’ve no sense of rhythm – and why am I doing as I’m told? For the sake of a bit of peace? Because there’ll be none. In the words of Bamber Gascoigne, they’ve started, so they’ll finish. They should be prosecuted for trespassing on me. I’d be better off like Stuart, two blokes in a house, no oestrogen, no unsynchronized premenstrual tension, no tantrums, no moaning or yackety-yack.’

  Through the window, he looked across the green and beyond the erosion fortifications. The river was picking up. Earlier in the day, it had been as calm as an abandoned boating lake or a sheet of greyish glass, but it was now changing its mind. Andrew knew how it felt. Like the Mersey, he di
dn’t know whether he was coming or going. He was going. No, he wasn’t. Er . . . he might be going. ‘God help me, and God help them if I finally lose my rag.’ He knew he was balancing on the very edge of his patience, and that he would push someone else rather than launching himself into space.

  Storm moved the door ajar just far enough to allow the front end of his lofty, muscular body to enter. For a few seconds, he waited to assess the boss’s mood, because he’d seemed a bit out of sorts just lately. When Andrew nodded, the rest of the dog came in, turned, and pushed the door into its closed position. Storm was in need of male company, which element was in short supply round here.

  He was a fed-up dog. Looking after two mobile little girls was taking its toll. The younger one, who walked on four legs, had some terrible habits, so he placed himself for the moment next to the pack leader, who would guard him. He was sick to death of fingers poking about in his ears, his eyes and his mouth, and tired of chubby little hands pulling his tail. Like Andrew, he was a bit fraught and fragile. Life was tough.

  ‘Hello, Storm. Very clever, these females, what? But I really miss Thora. I even miss the Bolton accent. Thora might have been on my side, but . . .’ But Thora was back in the home town, where her oldest son and his family took care of her. She’d started to age quite suddenly, and the whole business had broken Eva’s heart. ‘I knew she was older than me, like, but I never thought she’d end up like that, all arthritic and frail, God love her,’ Andrew’s housekeeper had wailed.

  ‘None of us knows,’ Andrew told the dog. ‘And Thora’s with loved ones, which is what really matters.’

  Loved ones? ‘I’ve four lads,’ Thora used to say, ‘three training to be hooligans like their father, and one nearly normal.’ Eventually, she’d changed hooligans to fooligans and they’d all turned out fine. The nearly normal one was now managing director of Sanderson’s Intelligent Kitchens, and he was making a fine job of walking in the footprints of Joseph Sanderson.

  ‘I miss Dad,’ Andrew told his dog. ‘And Mother. Until they’re gone, we’ve no idea of their true value. By the time we appreciate what we’ve had all our lives, it’s simply too late.’

  Mary. Oh, Mary. When he watched his daughter Kate with Richard, he saw an echo of his own brilliant marriage, an institution built on humour and communication at all levels. But Mary was dead, had been buried in the back garden for eleven years, and he’d been ordered to get his act together. ‘Pull yourself up, Dad. You’ve just the one life like the rest of us, and you must make the best you can of it.’ He was outnumbered and overruled; when or why had he allowed this to happen?

  Get his act together? He had five piano pupils, four of whom were good; he’d played yet again for Cancer Research his oft-adapted Overture to an Overture, his own nocturnes, and a polonaise he’d recently finished for Anya. Then the song. ‘A Liverpool Song’ had since been purchased for a quartet of tenors and was to be released as a single next Christmas. His act was very together.

  ‘Surgeon, carpenter, composer, lyricist, pianist, teacher, father, granddad, OBE,’ he said, counting on his fingers. ‘What more do they want of me, Storm? If I’m number one at the end of the year, we’ll buy an island, lad. We’ll come back from time to time to visit the old homestead and Mary, but just imagine the peace if we go all Outer Hebridean. Think of the fishing, eh? And the walks with no one watching us from a window. I know what happens. They spy on me and Anya. I know they go on about us sharing a rug and a cup.’

  Storm grunted; he had come to understand when an intelligent answer was required of him.

  Helen tapped at the door. ‘You decent in there, Dad?’

  ‘No.’

  She came in anyway. ‘You look wonderful,’ she whispered. Dressed up, her dad was extraordinarily handsome. ‘Prince Charming,’ she added. ‘Any woman would be proud to be seen with you.’

  ‘I don’t feel like Prince Charming. Migraine, lots of zigzag lines tracking across my eyes, and a slight throb in the left temple,’ he lied. Mendacity was becoming essential in this household. ‘I’m fit for nothing,’ he said in order to emphasize his statement.

  ‘Never mind. You don’t need to drive, because you’re going in a taxi.’

  ‘Am I? Can’t I curl up in a chair with a good book instead?’

  ‘You can’t read with a migraine. You’re going.’

  Oh, she was quick. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I say so, Kate says so, even Ian says so.’ She folded her arms; this action underlined the fact that she was in no mood for a change of mind.

  He gazed at her for several seconds. When had their positions been reversed? Was this some over-repeated sitcom rejected by the Beeb and put out by one of the inferior commercial stations? ‘And Eva?’ he asked sharply. ‘What about Madame Parquet?’

  ‘Eva started it.’

  He tried to look surprised, but failed completely. Eva had been in charge of everything for as long as Andrew could remember. The sun rose because she ordered it, rain fell when she needed it, buses ran on time because she wrote the schedule, the tide ebbed and flowed in accordance with her timetable.

  ‘I feel henpecked,’ he grumbled.

  ‘We learned from our mother. And from Eva, of course.’

  Astounded, he bent his head and gave her the under-the-eyebrows look, which was his version of folded arms. ‘Your mother did not henpeck me.’

  ‘That’s how clever she was. She kept your machinery so well oiled that you didn’t know she was in charge of your gearbox.’

  Andrew blinked a few times before turning his head and staring into the depths of an increasingly agitated river. Anger bubbled in his throat like heartburn. ‘Go away,’ he said. ‘I am about to change my clothes and take Storm for a walk. You and the rest of your coven can bugger off and tell everyone concerned that I have changed my mind and will not be eating out tonight.’

  ‘But what about all the—’

  ‘Out. Get out. It’s time you found somewhere to live, too. I want my life back, my own bloody life. I am sick of women. Even the dog wants a bit of peace and quiet.’

  Helen slammed the door in her wake and ran down the stairs. He heard her talking on the phone. Everything would grind to a halt within minutes, though the women’s tongues would carry on clacking, no doubt. Kate and Helen, encouraged by Eva, would sulk. Anya might be slightly hurt, and Sofia could well come out in sympathy, but he’d had enough. Like water on a stone, they had dripped on him, wearing him down with looks, words and heavy sighs. Knowing Anya as well as he did, he guessed that she wouldn’t have enjoyed being dragged from pillar to post by younger people. ‘She’ll be on my side,’ he said quietly. ‘She has to be, since she’s the only sensible person I know apart from you, Storm.’

  Helen finished on the phone. He heard her walking across Eva’s famous parquet and into the dining room, where she and her daughters had lived for many moons. Never before had he spoken so harshly to her or to his other children. But they were planning his existence, cajoling, suggesting, pulling, pushing, and he’d reached the end of his rope. And he needed his rope in case he decided to strangle somebody.

  He changed his clothes before picking up his mobile phone. ‘Anya?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Is Kate there?’

  ‘Upstairs with Sofia, yes. Angry, both of them, but Kate is being loud. I cover my ears before.’

  ‘Right. You bring the rug, I’ll bring the coffee. We do this our way.’

  ‘Good,’ she replied. ‘I can wear clothe not so tight. There is no room for food in this cockertail dress.’

  ‘Cocktail.’

  ‘Yes. I am come in taxi, you are wait.’

  ‘Indeed. I are wait.’

  She paused. ‘You talk wrong, making fun to me – of me.’

  ‘Yes.’ Anya understood. In spite of some small language difficulties, she never failed to get what he really meant. She was a treasure. Sometimes, she altered his heartbeat. Sometimes, things needed to be left alone to develo
p at their own pace, with or without arrhythmia.

  ‘OK, Andrew.’

  He sighed. ‘It isn’t that I don’t want to take you for a meal; it’s just the kids pulling on our reins all the time as if we’re a couple of horses. I can’t escape Helen, you see. My house is no longer mine.’

  ‘This, Andrew, I am know. I suffer, too. The dress tight under arms and kills me.’

  He grinned. ‘Don’t die on me, Anya. You’re my sole ally in a field full of landmines.’

  ‘Ally is?’

  ‘Friend.’

  ‘This I am be. You wrote for me polonaise, yes.’

  He cut the connection and sat in the window on Mary’s chaise longue. Dad had re-covered it for her. ‘I’m not good at letting go, Storm. Mother was the same, and Dad seemed to have caught the infection. Thora, Dad, Mother, grandparents . . . Mary. I’m an intelligent man, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Woof.’

  ‘Gifted, too.’

  ‘Arf.’

  ‘And modest with it. But I’m stubborn. I won’t be told, refuse to be pushed, and they learned none of this orchestration from Mary. With Mary, it was tit for tat. I’d get one over on her, and she’d return the favour. I tarred and feathered her once, you know. And she let me, because she’d abandoned me in ladies’ underwear at George Henry Lee’s, took the car and left me to get home by train. Mind, I used black treacle instead of tar, and we were finding pillow feathers in here for months afterwards.’ He paused. ‘I even found a couple in her wardrobe after she’d . . . died. They’re over there in that little cloisonné pot with a snip of her hair. She had hair like dark silk until the second lot of chemo. It came through as white silk after that.’

  Storm laid his head on the master’s knee. He was a dog who always looked sad, so his morose demeanour was eminently suitable for this occasion.

  ‘Come on, boy, let’s get back to what’s laughingly called normal. Coffee, the steps and Anya.’ He donned a sweater, picked up his Sunday best and hurled it onto the four-poster where it settled in a creased, uncared-for heap.