A Liverpool Song

by Ruth Hamilton

  Storm led the way. He knew where his lead was kept; he also knew he didn’t need it, but the master always wanted it these days in case something went wrong. Oh well, the boss was the best judge, Storm supposed, although everyone was aware that Andrew’s dog never bit a human, never fought with another animal. Even the wilful Toodles Two slept in Storm’s bed, usually alongside the dog, sometimes instead of him.

  Helen was in the kitchen. ‘Sorry, Dad,’ she said quietly. ‘We should have left you alone – Anya, too.’

  ‘I’m sorry, too. My temper seems to shorten with age, though I must insist on being left alone to make my way through the wilderness. Yes, I like Anya and yes, she likes me. But you shouldn’t be putting ice under our feet and forcing us to move so fast that we lose purchase on terra firma. You’re doing more harm than good, because Anya and I appreciate the simple life.’

  ‘Sorry,’ she said again.

  ‘But the rest of it – I’m not throwing you out. That was my vicious side – thank goodness I don’t drive down that road too often. This was and is your home, your place of safety.’ He filled the kettle. ‘Pass the cafetière, please. I’m on coffee, Anya’s on the rug.’

  Helen burst out laughing. ‘That sounded terrible.’

  ‘And it was completely intentional. I am still alive, dear, and my dotage is many years in the future. You, Kate, Eva and Sofia must stop being my mothers. I don’t need a mother. There is a possibility that I shall, in time, require a wife, but that’s all down to me and some poor woman, who may be Anya. But consider this. We can all fight and defeat or negotiate with humans we see and hear, but who can win against a ghost? This is still Mary’s house, and she’s buried in the garden. I won’t leave Rosewood. How can anyone argue with and overcome a dead woman?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Exactly. Read Rebecca. And don’t pursue a cause until you’ve worked out all possible repercussions. Anya and I are good friends. We shall continue at our own pace. Because it’s no one’s business, just hers and mine.’

  Andrew left the house with the dog, an unnecessary lead and his flask. Anya hadn’t yet arrived, so he threw driftwood for Storm while sitting on the steps. Like him, Anya was stubborn. She would have gone for the meal, but she hadn’t wanted to. He’d given her the key, and she was out of a prison created by his two daughters and her own girl, Sofia. And Eva; he must never forget Eva, because her input had probably been substantial.

  The little Polish woman arrived with her rug and a small basket of food. She wore an ageing navy-blue jogging suit and a pair of disgraceful trainers. ‘For my face, I am sorry. Kate made me a painted lady. And she coming for your blood this minute, because you don’t do what she is saying. I explain. I tell her we are sit on rug drink coffee people, but she angry. Sometimes, they just do not listen. They talk, and we must listen, but . . .’ She shrugged. Anya performed very expressive shrugs.

  ‘You look pretty, Anya.’

  ‘I look Max Factor,’ was her swift reply. ‘Face feels tight, like cement stuck to it. To speak is difficulty. And I not like taste of lipstick.’

  ‘You have food?’

  ‘Yes, because things happen. We move, yes?’

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Further down where we never sit. Here, she will look and find.’

  ‘That’s true. But she’ll see us further down as well.’

  ‘We must be armed for combat, and army march on stomach, so I have sandwiches. This time, is not Germans walking into Poland, is Kate driving into here. I ran out of house, jumped in taxi and come. She come soon, also.’

  Quick thought was required, as was quicker movement. ‘Come with me. Storm, come.’ Man and best friend ran back to the house with Anya and jumped into the Merc. Andrew burned some rubber as he reversed out of the drive and set off towards the coastguard station. When he rounded the corner, he spoke to his colleague in crime. ‘We’re still not out of the woods.’

  She looked round. ‘Is some trees, but not enough for woods.’

  ‘It’s a saying. It means we could still be in trouble if the level crossing’s against us.’

  ‘Ah. Train.’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  The barrier was down and the red light glowed its warning. Oh, heck. This stretch was famous for being a two-trainer, as the Southport- and Liverpool-bound trains passed each other not too far from here. Anya looked in her wing mirror. ‘Kate comes. I see her further back.’

  ‘Right.’ He applied all door and window locks. ‘Don’t look at her, don’t try to open your window, as I can override your decision from here.’

  She reacted immediately. ‘Then you as bad as she. I do what she tell me or what you tell me. Why? If I want open window you should allow. Always you moan about they telling you what to do. Do not tell me what about anything.’

  And the words fell out of his mouth of their own accord. ‘Mathew Street.’

  ‘Beatles,’ she answered. ‘About Liverpool, I am knowing things.’

  He swallowed a sob. She could never be Mary. She should never be Mary. After so many years, why had Mathew Street raised its head again? There was no way of repeating what he’d had with his wonderful wife. Anya was Anya. ‘That was where I met her,’ he said.

  ‘I know. I open window now, let your daughter lose some steam.’

  Kate’s head entered the car. ‘What the blood and sand are you two up to?’ she demanded. ‘After all the trouble we went to and the money we spent, I just—’

  ‘Living,’ was Anya’s swift interruption. ‘Sorry about restaurant, but I not eat Italian food, not pasta, not pastry for the pizza – is for me too heavy. So we do as we always do, rug, coffee, and this time is sandwiches with good Polish sausage and salad. Your father and me are being us. This is what we do. Also, Storm likes sandwiches, so he is come.’

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘Go away. The Liverpool-bound train will be here shortly, because Southport’s already gone through, and we shall be holding up the traffic. Here it comes now. Get back in your car and organize your own life for a change.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To hell in a handcart. Move your head out of the car, or we’ll be taking it with us, and I can assure you that hell is where you’ll feel quite at home.’ He revved the engine, and Kate backed off. The lights were green, and drivers behind Kate’s stationary vehicle started to lean on their horns.

  ‘What a thankless task is the raising of an ungrateful parent,’ she shouted before running back to her car.

  ‘She will follow?’

  ‘She may. Kate isn’t known for her patience.’

  ‘Good. This is to be fun.’

  ‘Glad you think so, madam.’ She was small enough to need rescuing from a crowd, but he hadn’t lifted a female since 1990. He liked a feisty one. He liked small women, as they were usually difficult. He liked Anya. ‘They want us married,’ he said bluntly. ‘That’s their aim and the reason for all this palaver.’

  ‘And you want, Andrew?’

  ‘No idea.’

  Anya engrossed herself in thought for a few minutes. What she needed to convey was delicate, and her knowledge of the language was far from perfect. ‘I not marry never,’ she said finally. ‘But when I find good man like you are, I live sometime with him, sometime not with.’ She sighed. ‘Your Elena, she is right. This English one bloody stupid language. She say like climb Everest on skateboard.’

  He exploded with laughter. ‘So you’re going to be a loose woman?’

  Anya nodded vigorously. ‘Since coming out of cocktail dress, I am loose. Was very tight clothe. No like tight clothe on me.’ She turned her head and stared at him. ‘Always laughing to me. Is no my fault I come from sensible country with sensible words. Where we going?’

  ‘Swan lake.’

  ‘Ballet?

  ‘No, I forgot my tights. We’re going to look at water with swans on it.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘See if they like Polish sausage
.’

  ‘Too good for birds,’ she snapped.

  ‘These are Queen Elizabeth’s birds. She owns them.’

  ‘Then let her feeding them.’

  ‘She’s two hundred miles away.’

  ‘Helicopterers. She can drop it to them from above.’

  There was something about Anya, something rare. She didn’t want to dress up, didn’t want to marry, yet she seemed ready for a relationship not unlike the one enjoyed by Mother and Geoff. Was he ready for anything? How preciously clean he had kept himself since Mary’s passing. But if he was going to fail in the bedroom, Anya would never mock him; mockery was not in her nature. And while the feelings he nursed for this woman were different from his love for Mary, she did occupy space in his heart.

  Andrew was no longer a maker of quick decisions. Way back down the years, he had found an adorable little munchkin outside the Cavern. He’d looked at her, picked her up and recognized her from the future. But that was a young man’s game and, at the start of his seventh decade, he was no youth. ‘We’re all right as we are for now, Anya.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We make our own way. Let Eva, Helen, Kate and Sofia live their lives while we live ours.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘We do as we like, you see.’

  ‘I am agreeable. We make mess without help. And when do they listen to us? Never. I saying to Sofia, “Look, he no good, he have tattoo on arms and ring through one ear,” so she go out with him. Another one with pin through eyebrow, also ring through nose like pig. I tell her not take him near magnets, he get stuck, but she not care. Is like talk to wall, as you English say.’

  He parked the car. ‘I am putting a stop to Kate,’ he said. ‘She’s still behind us. I’ve had enough, you’ve had enough, and the dog doesn’t care one way or the other.’

  She grabbed his arm. ‘But if she stay with us, we both fight her near swan lake. This will be fun.’

  He removed his hand from the car door. ‘You’re a terrible woman, Anya Jasinski, but my Kate is worse. She was born on an expensive silk carpet and has felt superior ever since. Without suits of armour, we are no match for her.’

  ‘Hmmmph.’

  Hmmmph was the same the world over, Andrew decided. It cleared every language barrier, and was usually the property of females. ‘On your head be it.’

  ‘I do not like hats.’

  ‘That was a perfect English sentence,’ he told her. ‘Well done. And Kate has turned back. We won.’

  Anya had not won. Now, with no audience to release her, she had to perform a task in order to save Eva an unpalatable duty that had haunted her since young womanhood. Why had Anya taken it on? Because she had played no part, because she had been a child in Poland when certain events had taken place? Her detachment was supposed to make it easier, but things had changed, and she was growing fonder of Andrew.

  Would she lose the man she valued? Was the bearer of bad tidings ever welcome? And she couldn’t tell him while he was driving, so she would be forced to tell him at swan lake, and that would spoil the outing. Andrew loved birds. He seemed to have a fondness for most animals. She could tell Eva she’d failed, that she’d been unable to force herself to do it, but that wouldn’t mend anything, would it? The idea was to save Eva from stress, from the weight of knowledge she had carried for well over thirty years.

  ‘You’ve gone quiet.’

  ‘Yes, this I do when I have nothing to say.’

  She made sense. Her English was broken, but her mind was intact, and he had no doubt that he could live with her. She would not marry, though, and Andrew remained a conventional soul. Although not particularly religious, he believed that society’s rules were there for a reason, but why? Stuart, his closest friend, had been forced to walk a different route because of his nature, so why the shock now? Why couldn’t he and Anya be different? And there was a lot to be said for Anya’s way, since it precluded divorce and made its own kind of sense. He wasn’t ready – was that it?

  ‘You thinking hard, yes?’

  ‘All the time. Sometimes, I wish I had a switch to turn myself off.’

  ‘Sleep does that.’

  ‘Depends on the dreams, Anya.’

  She sighed heavily. ‘Mary never come back. My man never come back. This we both know, yet we dream of them, yes? We dream about young days, happy days all gone now. So we drink coffee, sit on rug, comforting us both. The dead loved ones will not like us be unhappy.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Then in time we know what to do, Andrew. Our girls not say what we do; we say. If Sofia marry, I may go home, as I have some family and friends there.’

  That idea hurt him. She had never before mentioned the idea of returning to Poland, and he realized at that moment that life without her would be less bearable. Was it love? Was love in later life quieter, gentler? What he’d had with Mary could never be repeated, but he needed to feel something stronger than this, surely? Living in several minds was not easy. ‘I’d miss you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. I miss you, too, if I go back. But I am not sure that I will go. Sofia must be settled before I am to decide about it. But now, we look at swan lake.’

  Storm, unhappy on his lead, walked with them to the park pond. The birds were huge. He behaved himself.

  Kate Rutherford was not in the best of moods. She’d booked the restaurant, paid for the meal, ordered flowers and a string quartet, organized taxis – oh, Dad was such an infuriating man. She slewed her car onto Rosewood’s drive, parking it in a position that was rather less than tidy. ‘We were only trying to help,’ she said between gritted teeth. ‘Months they’ve sat on concrete drinking coffee; we just wanted to chivvy them on a bit.’

  She left the car and marched to the front door. Having forgotten her key, she rang the bell and waited, a foot tapping on the step. After all the trouble Kate had gone to, Anya had set off in a raggy old jogging suit and trainers that looked as if they needed fumigating. So much for preparation, then. What was a person supposed to do with delinquent parents? Shove them in a Borstal while they sorted themselves out? Did they have Borstals for the almost geriatric? There was Help the Aged, of course, but she doubted that such a charity would provide counselling for Dad.

  A flustered Helen opened the door. ‘Sorry, Kate. Sofia and I were bathing the girls. She says Anya shot off in a taxi.’

  ‘She did. I dropped Sofia here before following them. They were in Dad’s Merc, but I got fed up and turned back. Aren’t they infuriating? You go to all this trouble, and they bugger off without a word. And I have to get home early, because Richard’s bringing a case against a lawyer tomorrow – tricky.’

  ‘Suing one of his own?’

  ‘Defending the solicitor’s victim, but it amounts to the same thing. Very few firms are good enough to have that questionable privilege, and Richard’s is one of them. He always says a bent lawyer is a very talented crook, so he’s working hard to trip the chap up. And I worked hard to get Dad and Anya a good night out, all to no avail.’

  They sat in Andrew’s drawing room. ‘No gratitude,’ Kate snapped.

  ‘Worse than that,’ Helen said. ‘Anger. Real fury.’

  ‘Oh? Why?’

  Helen told her sister that their father had reached the end of his tether. In her opinion, retirement had disempowered him slightly, and he was building a new career in music. ‘I backed you up as best I could, sis, but he’s sick of what he sees as our interference, says he’s had enough of women.’

  ‘But we were only trying to help.’

  Helen swallowed. ‘I went along with you, Kate, as did Ian. And all the time, we should have remembered how ordinary Dad is. He doesn’t want frills and string quartets in some overpriced restaurant.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘And he hates us treating him as if we’re parents and he’s the child.’

  Kate sat back in the armchair. If Richard died, would she want people pushing her towards someone else? If Richard died, would she
want to live? Of course she would, because she had young children. Dad’s children were grown, had been adults when Mum died, so . . . ‘Whoops,’ she said softly. ‘I’ve jumped the gun again, haven’t I?’

  ‘Ian and I could have stopped you, but he’s too busy and I’ve got other matters on my mind. Our brother’s been brilliant. Daniel jumps out of planes all the time, goes on digs and . . . well, he’s left Pope’s.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Opening his own shop. The Lion’s Den.’

  ‘Weird name.’

  ‘Well, he is Daniel, so he’s in the lion’s den.’

  ‘Right. And you’re going back to him?’

  Helen made no reply. Having taken the lecture from Dad, she was ill-prepared for a second assault.

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘I am undecided except for one thing. I want no advice and no manipulation. Push Dad too far, and he pushes back. Push me, and I destroy clothes and wine. There will be no discussion on the subject, because it’s my life and my decision when I reach it. Go back to your perfect marriage—’

  ‘Helen, I—’

  ‘And leave me to mend or end mine. OK?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘OK.’ Some people never learned, it seemed. Helen had gone berserk, had destroyed her husband’s property, yet she was continuing to consider a move back to the Wirral. Daniel Pope would never change. If he stopped travelling, the evidence of his philandering might well sit right on Helen’s doorstep, but Kate had to keep her mouth shut.

  ‘Cup of tea or coffee?’ Helen asked.

  ‘No, I’d better go. I’ve left poor Richard to put the kids to bed, and he needs to rest before tomorrow. See you anon.’ She swept out of the house. Kate wasn’t good at sweeping out of the house, because she didn’t have her sister’s height, but she did her best.

  As she drove home, she found herself in pensive mode. Although she had no memory of it, she’d been told by Mum that Helen had stood up and walked early just to get to her sister in the playpen. They’d been inseparable. Kate, being the elder, made all the decisions. She chose what they would do, where they would go, what they would wear. ‘And it’s time I resigned,’ she told herself. Helen had outgrown her sister, and not just in height. Kate needed to back off.