A Good Liar

by Ruth Sutton

  A GOOD LIAR

  Between the Mountains

  and the Sea

  Ruth Sutton

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Next book

  Copyright details

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire: October 1916

  Jessie Thompson had been lying to her mother all her life. Even as a very young child, standing on a stool to reach the kitchen table, she’d pretended to wash her face in the big bowl, splashing the water, wiping her hands on the towel, for the sheer joy of defying her mother’s expectations. As a girl growing up, she’d clung to lies to define her independence. She’d lied about Clive too, and all the secret meetings, but now she knew the lying had to stop. All week in college, and this morning on the noisy train to Barrow, she’d known what had to happen, and she was dreading it.

  The walk from the station to the terraced house in Harter Street reminded Jessie how glad she was to be away at college. It was the smell that struck her as soon as she got down from the train, a smell of smoke and soot, and salt carried on the wind from the Irish Sea. Today the wind was gusty, with a sprinkle of rain that passed as she struggled down the hill. Catching sight of herself in a glass shop front Jessie saw her neat shape, crowned with a tangle of dark curls, a white blouse tucked into her long navy skirt. Her favourite hat, worn to boost her courage, had already fallen victim to the snapping breeze. After retrieving it from the gutter outside the station, she had tucked it away in her bag, abandoning her hair to its fate.

  It was Saturday morning and the wide streets were crammed with vehicles and people. Despite the rattling of passing trams Jessie recognized incomers’ accents from far away, Scotland and Ireland. She’d heard there were folk from Belgium too, refugees from the German invasion, who lived in squalor in the Scotch flats, the tenements on the other side of town. Rising above them all, the town hall spire and the tall chimneys of the ironworks vied for dominance. Everyone in Barrow was there for work, on ships or steel, guns or shells. Smuts from hundreds of chimneys stained the flapping washing and the shipyard hooter summoned shift after shift to an endless production line. Vickers shipyard governed the town, making the rules, building the houses, different standards for different grades of the workforce. Clive’s house in Mikasa Street in Vickerstown, across the bridge on Walney Island, had a bathroom and a small garden, one up from the fitters but not as posh as the foremen’s houses on the promenade

  Jessie pushed open the door of 23 Harter Street as quietly as she could and put her bag down in the passage. Sounds from the kitchen told her Cora Thompson was at home, but the words Jessie needed would not come. Before she could compose herself, the kitchen door opened.

  ‘Oh it’s you,’ Cora said to her daughter. ‘I didn’t remember you were coming home this weekend.’

  ‘I didn’t tell you,’ said Jessie.

  ‘Well, you’re here now. I’m just on my way out to Aunty Barbara’s, and then the shopping. Want to come?’

  ‘No, no thanks. Feeling a bit tired actually.’

  ‘You stay here then, pet,’ said Cora. ‘Stella’s asleep upstairs, in the back bedroom, so don’t wake her. She’s at work later. Worn out, poor thing.’

  ‘Stella?’

  ‘The lodger, from Preston, didn’t I tell you? Now I’m on my own and with your sister on the other side of the world, I’m renting out the back room to help make ends meet.’

  ‘What about Dad?’

  ‘Your father’s dead to me, dear. We won’t see him again. Good riddance, Barbara says. Well I’m away. Back about five. Help yourself to whatever’s in the pantry, but not the ham. That’s for tomorrow.’

  And she was gone.

  Jessie made herself a cup of tea and thought about how easily her father had been cut out of the family, pecked and scorned by his disappointed wife until he could bear it no longer. ‘Going to visit me old mam,’ he’d said as he headed for the Irish ferry. That had been nearly a year before and his name had hardly been mentioned since. At least he was out there somewhere, she thought, not dead and buried like Clive in the cold ground, lost to her forever. She sat at the well-scrubbed kitchen table and sipped her tea, still trying to decide what to say when her mother eventually returned. She would have to say something. Two months gone already and soon it would start to show.

  With Cora not there to forbid, Jessie took her tea into the front parlour and put her feet up on the hard couch under the lace-curtained window. Even there, in the room reserved for company, a thin film of soot covered everything. She put a cushion behind her head and lay as comfortably as she could, her hands together on her stomach. The child was in there, growing. It was only a few days since she’d seen the news of Clive’s death but she remembered the short notice word for word. Cora sent the Barrow News every week and on that sunny Sunday afternoon Jessie had taken the newspaper to the seat under the birch tree in the long back garden of the college hostel in Ambleside. The front pages were always about the war. Clive had told her how reading the names of boys he knew among the listed dead made him made him feel sad and guilty. No one from Vickers could be conscripted. People called it ‘the funk hole’, the place where cowards worked to avoid the war. Jessie had been thinking about that and the life ahead of them when she reached page five, the local news. A headline caught her eye:

  Shipyard Tragedy: young man killed in fall

  On Thursday afternoon Clive Whelan (21), unmarried and residing at 11 Mikasa Street, Vickerstown fell off high staging in the new airship hangar at Devonshire Dock. He struck his head on the side of the dock before falling into the water, and was pulled out of the water by others at the scene. Dr Ware’s services were summoned but he could only pronounce life extinct. The body was subsequently conveyed to the mortuary.

  She’d tried to get up but her knees had given way. When they found her she was still lying where she had fallen. Golden leaves from the birch tree had settled on her dark hair, shining in the autumn sun.

  ‘He was my fiancé,’ she said to Sister Bailey after they helped her into the house. ‘We were going to marry. It was just the once.’

  ‘Just the once what, dear?’ said the sister kindly. Then she’d said they would ask Jessie’s mother to come and Jessie had used all her strength to say no.

  Now she lay on the couch in the front room, thinking about Clive and the quiet room in Mikasa Street, where they’d made love as the rain hammered on the window and thunder echoed round the inland fells. Just that one time. They’d never meant it to happen, but when they got caught in the storm and splashed breathless into the empty house, it just did. The thought of it burned in her mind. The cool white of his body, the sounds he made, the feeling of being possessed by him. She’d wanted him so badly then and she wanted him still, even while his child grew inside her and she would never see him again.

  T
hey’d been so happy that day, on the beach on the southern end of Walney Island, away from the weekend crowds at Biggar Bank, just the two of them. Cora believed that her precious elder daughter, the clever one, the one with a future, was out with her friend Clarice: that was the lie Jessie had provided and her mother had accepted, because it suited her to do so.

  ‘Do your folks know about me?’ Jessie asked Clive.

  ‘They know there’s someone, but they don’t know who,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell them when we’re ready.’

  And then Clive told her about his new job, about the special tiny rivets on the airships and the skill it took to handle them, and that he’d been specially chosen and would probably have to move south. She’d prepared herself for losing him, and then he asked her – no, he told her – that when she finished at college they would be married and start a life together, away from the dirty noisy town, away from her mother and his family. That was what she knew that day, and that was what she wanted. But now he was gone, and Cora still knew nothing.

  Jessie woke with a start when Cora came back into the house. For a moment she wondered where she was. She would have to tell: it couldn’t wait any longer.

  She got up and walked through into the kitchen where Cora was standing by the range, waiting for the kettle to boil.

  ‘Tea?’ said Cora, half turning to look at her daughter. ‘You don’t look well, pet. Maybe you should see Dr Doggett, he’s always so understanding, isn’t he?’

  ‘Can you sit down a minute, Mam?’ said Jessie, leaning on a chair to steady herself. ‘I do need to tell you something.’

  ‘I’m all ears,’ said her mother, sitting down as she was bid. ‘What is it? Something good, I hope.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Jessie. She didn’t know how to say it. ‘Mam, I think I’m pregnant.’

  ‘Nonsense, dear, that’s impossible,’ said Cora, brightly. ‘You don’t even have a young man. You must be late because you’re not well. I told you, you need to see Dr Doggett. Now I’ll make that cup of tea and we’ll go –’

  ‘No, Mam,’ said Jessie. ‘I’m not going to see the doctor. I talked to the sister at college. She thinks I’m nine weeks gone. The baby’s due in May.’

  ‘What baby? You can’t be. Who …?’

  ‘His name was Clive Whelan. He worked at Vickers.’ She hesitated, watching the colour drain from her mother’s face. ‘He’s dead. He was killed at work, last week.’

  ‘You’re having a baby, and the father is dead?’

  Jessie nodded.

  Cora got up from her chair. First she stood quite still, then leaned forward, pushing her anxious face close to Jessie’s.

  ‘You’re hiding something from me. This is nonsense. Who is it really? Whoever it is, you have to marry. Nine weeks, that’s not too late. We can say it was premature. These quick weddings are happening all the time …’

  ‘No, Mam!’ Jessie shouted at her mother. ‘Listen to me. Clive and I were engaged but we didn’t want to say anything just yet, not till later. We were going to marry when I finished at college. He’s a good man. Good family. Mikasa Street. They’ve got a bathroom.’

  ‘A bathroom!’ Cora shouted back. ‘What good’s a bathroom to us now. He’s dead. You can’t marry him, he’s dead. And now what will we do?’

  ‘I can have the baby. We were engaged.’

  ‘No you were not engaged, you stupid girl. I didn’t know about it. Do his people know?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About the baby, do they know?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank God. You can get rid of it.’

  Jessie stared at her mother.

  ‘Get rid of it,’ Cora spat the words again. ‘You have to. No wedding? You can’t just stay round here getting big. What’ll people say? You have to get rid of it.’ She stumbled to the sideboard and reached for a jar off the top shelf. ‘Look here,’ she said, pulling notes and coins out of the jar. ‘I’ve got money. There’s that woman, down near the docks, everyone knows about her, she’ll do it. Here, take the money.’

  Cora threw the money onto the table. Coins clattered on the floor.

  Jessie could not speak. Cora talked on, as if to herself, bending to pick up the coins. ‘That’s it. You can get it done, and then go back to college. No one any the wiser. Don’t tell me about him, I don’t want to know. Then we can pretend it never happened. What were you thinking of? All that money I spent on you, and you go and get knocked up by the first boy who looks at you. Typical, head in a book all the time, no idea what’s going on. Off with the fairies, like your dad.’

  ‘I don’t want your money.’

  ‘Well you won’t get it from anyone else.’

  ‘I won’t kill the baby.’

  ‘Oh yes you will, my girl. No daughter of mine, parading round the streets like a common tart for all to see. You’ll do it, or you’ll leave this house.’

  Jessie looked at her mother who was pacing up and down the small kitchen. Spittle flecked the corners of Cora’s mouth.

  ‘Stop shouting, Mam. That girl upstairs …’

  Cora closed the kitchen door and leaned against it. ‘How could you?’ she whispered, staring at Jessie but still not seeing her. ‘Did he seduce you? Did he hurt you?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t like that.’

  ‘So you gave it up, like a useless common girl. After all I’ve done for you.’

  ‘I won’t get rid of the baby,’ said Jessie. ‘You can’t make me.’

  ‘Well, you’re not having it here. And you can’t keep it. They won’t let you.’

  ‘Who won’t?’

  ‘That precious college of yours. Respectable girls that’s what they want, not common whores.’

  Jessie sobbed suddenly, covering her mouth, but Cora kept on talking. ‘Barbara, she’ll know. She’ll know what to do. She’s family. You have to talk to her.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘Well I will then. Someone has to do something. What a mess. Stay here.’

  Cora opened the back door, then turned.

  ‘You haven’t told anyone, have you? Do they know?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘His folks, whoever they are.’

  ‘No. I told you that. They’re good people, Mam.’

  ‘I don’t care how good they are. So long as they don’t know, we can get away with it. Don’t want them interfering, thinking they’re better than us. Mikasa Street! You stay here. Don’t talk to anyone. I’m going to Barbara’s.’

  * * *

  Seven months later, in a tall brick house in Carnforth, three young women lay in beds lined against the walls in a top floor room. There was a fourth bed in the room but it was empty, a grey blanket tucked in at the corners with fierce precision. A late spring wind from the east was roaring in the empty fireplace, but the young women did not hear it. They were listening instead to their friend who was crying in the brightly lit delivery room at the other end of a long corridor. The sobs rose to a scream that made two of them cover their ears while the third shut her eyes tightly. The sound faded for a while and one of the young women spoke softly into the silence.

  ‘She must be done soon, surely to God.’

  ‘Three o’clock, she started,’ said another. ‘What time is it now, Jess?’

  There was a pause before a third voice answered.

  ‘Gone midnight,’ said Jessie. ‘It could be a while yet. Try not to listen, Molly. Get down under the blanket.’

  ‘I’ve tried, it’s no good. I can’t bear it. What are we going to do?’

  A bed creaked as Jessie got up. ‘I’ll put the light on. No, wait. Can you close the door, Ann, so they can’t see the light?’

  Dim light seeped across the draughty room. Jessie got back into bed quickly, pulling a shawl around her.

  ‘Let’s talk,’ she said. ‘That might cover the noise when she starts again.’

  ‘How long will it take?’ whispered Ann. ‘They didn’t tell me it would take this long. I thought once
the water broke the baby would come straight away. I won’t be able to do it, I know I won’t.’

  ‘Try not to think about it, Ann.’ Jessie reached for her hand. ‘Some babies do come quickly but not the first one usually. Remember Eunice? She said she couldn’t remember a thing about it and you know what a racket she made when she was having hers.’

  ‘When did she say that?’

  ‘Before she left.’ Jessie went on, as calmly as she could, ‘I told her we could hear her making a noise and she said she couldn’t remember. She laughed.’

  ‘Can’t imagine Jean laughing after this,’ said Ann. ‘Does it hurt that much, Jess?’

  ‘How should I know?’

  ‘You’re clever. Schooling and that. You know more than me and Molly put together.’

  ‘Not about this, I don’t.’

  There was silence in the room for a few minutes, save for the whine of the wind.

  Ann spoke again, ‘What will you call the baby, Jess?’

  ‘Don’t know,’ said Jessie. ‘If I can’t keep it, I don’t want to give it a name. That’s their job.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Whoever takes it. They have to name it. It’s theirs then, not mine.’

  Molly pushed herself up a little, holding one hand under her belly. ‘I want to keep mine. Only for a little while, but it has to have a name. Harriet for a girl and David for a boy, after me dad.’

  A brief silence, then Jessie spoke again.

  ‘I don’t want this baby. Never did. It was Clive I wanted. This should never have happened.’

  Molly stared across the room at her. ‘Oh Jess, you can’t – it’s Clive’s baby. Could look like him, be like him. You can’t say that.’

  ‘Maybe I did want it, at the beginning,’ Jessie went on, as if she hadn’t heard, ‘but now I know I don’t. If I keep it we’ll just be poor and miserable together. This way at least it gets a life, a proper life, more than I could give it. And I can live too, with no one to worry about, no one who can go off and leave me. Independent. That’s the only way for me now.’

  ‘Where will you go, if your mam won’t have you back?’ asked Molly, unable to envisage a life so alone.

  ‘Anywhere,’ said Jessie. ‘While the war’s on there’ll be work. In a factory, making wings or engines or something. I’ll get a job.’