‘Rosie?’ He wasn’t shouting but she didn’t have to strain to hear what he was saying. His voice had always had a very clear, penetrating sound to it. ‘Open the door, lass. This is New Year’s Day.’
She knew what day it was and at last her brain was working. ‘Go round to the front of the house, Shane, and I’ll get your mam and da for you. I don’t open the back door this time of night.’
There was a long pause and then, ‘No? It opened well enough earlier.’
‘I didn’t say it didn’t open, just that I don’t intend to open it now.’ Her heart was thumping with the implication of his last comment, but now was not the time to take him up on it. He wanted her to know he was watching her, all along he’d wanted it. That was the reason for his visits to the Co-op. But she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing how much it bothered her. ‘Come round to the front and I’ll tell your mam and da you’re here.’
She fairly flew into the sitting room and such was her entrance that everyone stopped talking and looked at her, which was not how she’d wanted it to be. She forced a smile saying, ‘The tea’s on its way,’ before looking straight at Annie and adding, ‘Shane’s arrived to give you a lift home.’
‘Shane?’ If Rosie had said the Grim Reaper Annie couldn’t have been more surprised.
‘He’s coming to the front. He . . . came to the back door, but I asked him to go round to the front.’ Rosie didn’t offer an explanation as to why and no one asked her, but Zachariah and Davey rose as one, and then, when there came the sound of a sharp rat-a-tat-tat on the front door, Rosie caught hold of Zachariah’s sleeve as he made to brush past her saying, ‘Please, please, it’s New Year’s Day. He’s only come to pick his mam and da up.’
Why the hell had he come here tonight? Annie’s head was spinning with the effects of the punch but she knew she had to act fast. Zachariah was no fool, and Shane had said enough that night when he’d first come home to let them know he’d had some sort of run-in in the past with Rosie’s husband. By, just when she’d had a lovely evening and all, she’d really been enjoying herself. ‘I’ll go, lad.’ Rosie was still holding on to Zachariah and now Annie’s tone suggested it was perfectly normal to have someone hammering on your front door while the occupants of the house had a tussle inside. ‘An’ we’ll be straight off, it’s late. Come on, Arthur.’
Arthur McLinnie lumbered to his feet to join his wife who was already in the hall, and Rosie and Zachariah followed her, Rosie saying, ‘Thank you, Mrs McLinnie, I’m sorry,’ as she helped the old woman into her coat, Zachariah holding Arthur’s in readiness.
Annie didn’t prevaricate or pretend she didn’t know what Rosie meant. She looked straight at Rosie and said, ‘It’s me that’s sorry, lass, heart sorry, an’ on New Year’s Day an’ all. Thank you for a lovely evenin’, lass. You an’ all, lad.’ And then, her voice sharp, ‘Come on, Arthur.’
‘Wh - what’s the hurry?’
Arthur was definitely the worse for wear, his state emphasized by the fact that Davey and Mick were at his elbows steadying him as he lurched along the hall. Annie waited until he was beside her before she opened the front door with a wide flourish, as she said, ‘Oh there you are, our Shane. A lift home, so Rosie tells me? An’ there we was gettin’ our coats on as you turned up on the doorstep.’
In all the time Shane had had the car she and Arthur had only ridden in it twice, and it had hurt Arthur, she knew it had. But now Annie could have killed her husband as he piped up behind her - the drink making him brave and bringing out the bitterness which had been lurking beneath the surface - ‘An’ to what do we owe the honour of ridin’ in me lord’s fancy motor then, eh? Sky caved in or somethin’?’
Shane had had a smile on his face when Annie first opened the door which had faded somewhat on the realization he wasn’t going to be allowed across the threshold, but now, as his father finished speaking and no one said a word, his face was straight. He looked at them all, his mother with his father just behind and to the side of her, Davey and Mick still holding Arthur up, and Rosie and Zachariah just behind the three men, Zachariah’s arm round Rosie’s waist. He could see Rosie’s mother and sister with the bloke from the Co-op, and Sally, whom he knew to be Rosie’s friend, in the hall just outside the sitting-room door, with Flora framed in the doorway. They had been having a good time. He knew it from what he had gathered as he watched the house for the last three hours or so, but he would have been able to read it in their flushed faces anyway. There had been coming and going, laughter, noise, and at midnight the house had fair rocked with their jollity, and all the time he had been out in the freezing cold skulking about like a damn pimp on a bad night.
As his gaze moved over each face, it came to Shane that they were all linked by the very things he had been on the outside looking in on all his life: affection born of familiarity; friendship; genuine warmth and love, they were all there to a greater or lesser extent.
And there was his mother at the head of the bunch with her great fat body like a fleshy barricade to stop him entering the hallowed portals. The thought stabbed at him, causing his eyes to narrow. She was a strong woman, his mam, and not just in her body either. Normally, in any other woman, such an attribute would have brought a grudging respect if nothing else, but with his mother it merely reinforced the resentment and dislike that was at the base of his feeling for the woman who had given birth to him. And in that moment, in a flash of insight, he suddenly became aware that what she was doing in the flesh she had done in the spirit from when he was a little lad. She had always kept him on the outside, at a distance from herself, his father, his brothers. She had always allowed him so far and then no further. Why? Why?
His thoughts made it impossible for him to bring a smile back to his face as he said, his voice cool and penetrating, ‘Well? Do you want a lift or not?’ He was speaking to his mother but his eyes flickered to Rosie, and it was then that Annie actually pushed at him, saying, ‘ ’Course, lad, ’course, never look a gift horse in the mouth, eh? An’ take no notice of your da, all right? He’s had a few.’
‘Looks like you’ve all had a few.’
He had almost smacked Annie’s hands off him, turning on the path to see Davey and Mick still helping Arthur - whose legs were completely gone - down the step, and the general movement had brought Rosie and Zachariah, their arms now entwined, onto the threshold. Rosie was twenty-three weeks pregnant and in the last couple of weeks the mound in her stomach had become definite proof of this, but with the light behind her, and the silhouette of her body shown clearly through the thin wool of her dress, her changed shape was highlighted even more.
Shane stood as one transfixed. Annie hadn’t told him Rosie was expecting a child - knowing how he felt about her Annie had decided least said, soonest mended - and in all the times he had seen her outside the Co-op she had been dressed in outdoor clothes which had concealed her condition. His discovery gave him the biggest shock of his life. He stood as though in a trance, the blood draining from his face, and the emotion filling him was actual revulsion. He had accepted that she had used Zachariah for her own ends, he could understand that; money could enable you to put up with almost anything. But that she had allowed him to plant his seed in her. Him, that runt, that cripple! And his voice expressed his repugnance, along with his curled lip and narrowed eyes, as he looked straight at Rosie and said, ‘Looks like you’re fulfillin’ your end of the deal. You’ve got some guts, I’ll say that. A husband’s one thing, but a bairn that’s a freak--’
He had barely got the word out before Zachariah had uttered a sound resembling a low growl, which sounded more like an animal than a man, but as her husband made to throw himself at Shane Rosie held on to him with all her might, crying as she did so, ‘No, no, he’s not worth it, don’t you see? A fight is exactly what he wants.’
Arthur had lurched sideways and gone sprawling as Davey had let go of him to help Rosie hang on to Zachariah, causing Mick, who was still hol
ding Arthur’s other arm, to stumble and slip on the frozen snow. In his flailing to remain upright he grabbed at Annie, with the result that all fourteen stone of her considerable bulk landed on top of him causing his breath to leave his body in a strangled wheeze.
Tommy Bailey and Joseph went to the aid of the tangled three on the ground, but Rosie was oblivious to everything but Shane as she hissed at him, her eyes narrowed and flashing fire, ‘You vile man! You get out of my sight. You’re not fit to be drawing the same air as decent folk.’
‘Me, vile?’ Shane’s voice was low and guttural. ‘Me?’
‘Yes, you.’
The three on the ground had now been lifted to their feet, Mick and Joseph supporting the inebriated Arthur, and as Tommy came forward to assist Davey, Rosie let go of her husband and moved forward a step as she continued to glare at Shane. But Shane looked past her to where Zachariah was struggling to break free, and his expression was malevolent as he spat, ‘You! You. You see what you’ve done?’
‘Get in the car! Get in the car.’ Annie was beside herself, and as she brushed past Rosie and reached her son’s side she pushed him backwards. As Shane, with a lightning movement, turned his body towards her everyone thought he was going to strike his mother, but Annie held her ground, her glare matching Rosie’s, and after a long moment he turned towards the gate.
‘Here, give him to me.’ Annie took Arthur from Mick and Joseph who had followed her forward, and now she bodily whisked her small wiry husband down the path so fast his thin legs were dangling.
‘By . . .’ As the engine roared and the car drew off, Joseph turned to Mick at the side of him. ‘He’s a nasty customer if ever I saw one.’
A nasty customer. In the moment before Davey and Tommy released Zachariah and he reached her side the words vibrated in Rosie’s head. Shane McLinnie was more than a nasty customer. She had never seen such hate in anyone’s face as when he had looked at her husband. And then Zachariah’s arms were round her and the others were all talking at once as they drew them both back into the warmth and light of the house.
‘Eee, I never thought I’d live to see the day one of me own showed me up like that. What were you thinkin’ of, lad?’
Annie was in the back of the Morris Cowley, Arthur sprawled drunkenly in the front and already snoring his head off. She had decided to play dumb as to the underlying cause of the mêlée, not so much to spare Shane’s feelings or even her own, but because she was frightened of what would be said if Shane’s obsession with the lass was put into words. Obsession. She knew all about obsession. Hadn’t Shane’s father been filled with an unholy lust for her from when she’d been nowt but a bairn? Walter had first taken her when she’d been no older than Hannah; crept into her bedroom one night when she’d been sleeping the innocent dreams of a bairn and, with one hand over her mouth to still her screams and the other hoisting her nightie up round her waist, he’d entered her before she’d even known what was happening. That had been the end of her childhood. From then on her days had been filled with sick apprehension and her nights with terror. He had said that it was all her fault, that she had tempted him, led him on and, bairn that she was, she had believed him. He was her big brother, wasn’t he, and everyone had always said how nice it was the two of them was so close what with her mam’s other bairns all dying before any of them reached a year old.
And so she had kept quiet, year after year she had kept quiet, until, with the onset of her periods at the relatively late age of fifteen, her body - which had been very small and thin and childish until then - had shot into womanhood, and in the space of a few months she had become tall and heavy and better able to defend herself against his attacks. And she had defended herself, by, she had, she’d even gone to the lengths of threatening him with a cut-throat razor she’d bought from the pawn shop. And then she’d met Arthur at sixteen, and - desperate to get away from home - had married him within six months. And they had been happy enough, in a way. He was not a particularly physical man and had been content with a routine weekly coupling after their night out of a Saturday, and he had left her alone altogether when she was carrying the bairns. Aye, she could have married a lot worse than her Arthur, and she’d grown fond of him over the years.
Shane hadn’t answered her or acknowledged that she had spoken, and Annie, sick with the shame and self-debasement that always accompanied thoughts of her brother, remained silent as her thoughts went on to the night Shane had been conceived. When Walter and his wife and their bairns had turned up on her doorstep that night twenty-five years ago, all the old feelings of guilt and pain and fear had kept her dumb at first as Walter had told the story of how they’d been turned out of their lodgings and they’d got nowhere to go until they left for Australia some weeks hence. Arthur had immediately offered them a roof over their heads as long as they didn’t mind kipping in the kitchen - the lads had had the two bedrooms in those days, and she and Arthur the front room - and she hadn’t had the guts to say anything different. By, she had paid for that act of cowardice sure enough.
It had been all right at first. Walter had been just as you’d expect a brother to be, nothing more, and the temptation to tell Arthur what had happened when she was younger - which she’d never breathed to a living soul - had faded as the days had gone by. And then one night, when her lads and his bairns were out playing, and his wife was at the shops and Arthur at work, he’d come up behind her when she’d been on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor.
It had been a brutal rape and afterwards, when she’d crawled into her bedroom and jammed the blanket box against the door, she’d been hysterical for hours. She hadn’t come out that night and when Arthur called the doctor in the morning, and they had had to break the window and climb in from the street, he had diagnosed a mental and physical breakdown caused by overwork. Overwork! And so Arthur had got rid of Walter and his family, and Jessie and one or two other neighbours had looked after the bairns during the day when Arthur was working, and she’d lain in her bed and tried to hang on to what was left of her reason. And then she’d discovered she was pregnant.
It was only the fact that the baby could possibly have been Arthur’s that kept her from suicide. She would have been prepared to answer for her immortal soul, even that of a child conceived by rape and incest, but an innocent bairn born under the marriage vows? The Holy Mother would look on that as murder. She’d gone to confession and for the first time ever she had spoken of the unspeakable, and Father Bell had confirmed her fears. She would be damning herself for eternity if she considered taking her own life and that of her child. The good Lord would see her through this, hadn’t He known what it was to suffer degradation and humiliation at the hands of sinful men? He would strengthen her, she mustn’t fear. And He had, aye, He had, even when the bairn was born and she’d looked into Walter’s face, He had strengthened her, and - amazingly - put a love in her for the innocent product of a man’s wickedness. But there had been fear there too, deep, consuming, mind-numbing fear that the innocent had the seed of something abominable . . .
‘Did you know?’
‘What?’ Annie’s eyes shot to the back of Shane’s neck as his voice brought her out of the nightmare.
‘Did you know?’ he ground out through clenched teeth.
‘About the lass expectin’? Aye, ’course I knew, it’s no secret an’ bairns have a way of presentin’ themselves once two people are wed.’ She wasn’t about to tell him that Jessie had been round her door the minute she’d heard, all upset like. Not that Jessie didn’t like Zachariah, aye, she did, but a bairn? Like her, Jessie had thought they wouldn’t go in for children with him being the way he was, just in case. Things could be passed down in families from generation to generation, everyone knew that. Look at the MacFells with their trouble, one idiot after another they seemed to have, and there was the Wheatleys with each generation producing bairns with club feet. But she’d told Jessie not to worry, what else could she do? And it certainly wasn�
�t something any of them could speak to Rosie or Zachariah about.
‘Presentin’ themselves!’ Shane laughed, a high mirthless laugh, and then there followed something so crude and base that Annie’s eyes stretched wide and her jaw sagged, but only for a moment and then she said, her indignation not at all feigned, ‘I’ll thank you to keep a civil tongue in your head, lad, an’ remember who you’re speakin’ to.’
‘Don’t push me, Mam.’
It was for all the world as though she had been the obscene one, and again Annie’s voice reflected her umbrage as she said, ‘It’s not me doin’ the pushin’, lad. To barge in there like that an’ then to say what you said, an’ on New Year’s Day of all days. What must they all be thinkin’--’
‘I don’t care what they’re thinkin’, get that through your thick head. An’ nothin’ I could say can compare with what she’s done.’
‘What?’ Annie rubbed her hand across her mouth where the beads of perspiration had gathered. ‘I dunno what you’re on about, I don’t straight. They’re married, for cryin’ out loud.’
‘Not for much longer.’
Annie pulled herself up straight, there had been something in his voice that went far beyond the rage and fury of the moment. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ And when there was no immediate answer: ‘Shane?’
‘You work it out. You seem to have all the answers.’
‘Now look, lad--’
‘No! You look.’ He stopped the car so suddenly that Arthur, who had been gently snoring and muttering to himself, would have shot forward into the windscreen but for Shane’s arm restraining him. ‘You look, Mam.’ Shane turned in his seat, ignoring his father’s ‘Wh . . . what is . . . it? What . . .’, as he said, ‘All me life I’ve held me hand with her, all me life, an’ where’s it got me? But no more.’
Reach for Tomorrow Page 27