The Old House on the Corner

by Maureen Lee

  ‘I find that very confusing,’ Gareth admitted.

  ‘I don’t know what confusing means.’

  They went through the back door. In the kitchen, Victoria was grating cheese. There was a bottle of red wine and two glasses on the table, a bowl of mixed salad, and a plate of bread and butter.

  Tiffany regarded the miniature feast with interest. ‘If you’re Victoria’s husband,’ she said to Gareth, ‘why do you live in another house?’

  ‘But I’m not Victoria’s husband.’

  ‘Then why is she making your dinner?’

  ‘It doesn’t automatically follow that if you share a meal with someone that you’re married to them.’

  ‘I don’t know what that big word means,’ Tiffany said gravely.

  Gareth mouthed ‘help’ at Victoria and she giggled. ‘I think you’d better say goodnight to Danny and go home, Tiff. You’ve struck Gareth speechless.’

  ‘I didn’t touch him,’ Tiffany protested.

  ‘Jaysus, Mary and Joseph,’ Gareth groaned, letting his head drop on to the table with a thud, waking Tabitha who scuttled upstairs, just as Danny Jordan came marching down.

  ‘Mam’ll have the tea ready by now,’ he announced. ‘I’d better be going.’ He was a heavily freckled boy with flaming red hair and looked about fifteen.

  Victoria introduced them. ‘Danny, this is Gareth. He’s a whiz on computers, miles better than I am.’

  The two shook hands. Danny said he’d brought Oliver down with him and would take Tiffany home. The little girl took his hand and regarded him adoringly.

  ‘Things are getting clearer,’ Gareth said after the pair had gone.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oliver’s a teddy bear. I thought he was a live human being.’

  Victoria grinned. ‘Can I make the omelettes now?’

  ‘Unless there are more people likely to come downstairs, why not?’

  ‘Ma,’ Danny said excitedly when he went into number two, ‘Victoria said I can have her computer when she leaves on Sunday.’

  ‘How much does she want for it, son?’

  ‘Nothing. She said I can have it for nothing. Our Patrick can have our old one for himself.’

  Patrick frowned. ‘But that’s not fair.’

  ‘I don’t see why,’ Danny said reasonably. ‘You’ve only met Victoria the once and then you were rude to her. I’ve been there every day and she’s my friend.’

  ‘It’s a waste of time arguing about it,’ Marie pointed out. ‘There’s only room for one computer in the bedroom. The old one’ll have to go.’

  ‘That’s not fair!’ Danny argued. ‘Why should our Patrick use the new one when it’s mine?’

  ‘Because Patrick plays on the computer just as much as you and he can’t be denied the use of the only one we have. What do you think, Liam?’

  Liam had been listening to the argument while half-watching the television news. ‘I think your mammy’s right. Tomorrow, perhaps Patrick could go and thank Victoria for such an expensive gift. Take her something, a little bunch of flowers, for instance. I’m sure she’ll be very pleased.’

  Patrick looked at Marie. He was a much shyer, far more withdrawn lad than his brother. ‘Do I have to, Ma?’

  ‘It would be a nice gesture, son.’

  ‘I would call it a condition, not a gesture,’ Liam said evenly, ‘if you want to use the computer that Victoria is giving to Danny.’

  It was rare that either of her lads lost their tempers, Marie was shocked to the core when Patrick’s face bulged with anger and went very red. ‘Who the shit do you think you are, laying down conditions?’ he demanded thickly. ‘You’re not me da.’

  ‘Don’t swear, son,’ she said weakly. ‘And don’t speak to Liam in that way.’

  ‘I’ll speak to Liam in whatever way I like,’ Patrick said contemptuously. ‘He’s nothing to do with me. He’s in no position to talk to us about conditions.’

  Marie noticed Danny edge closer to his brother. They might fight between themselves, but they always stuck together if the situation called for it. ‘I wouldn’t want to keep the computer to meself, not really,’ Danny said. He looked quite shaken by the argument. ‘Victoria surely meant it to be for Patrick too. I’m sorry about what I said before, Paddy.’ He nudged Patrick’s shoulder with his own and Patrick managed to raise a half-smile.

  ‘Ah, well, so that’s settled,’ Liam said easily. ‘I think I’ll go upstairs and have a wee read where it’s quiet.’

  ‘Are you all right now, Patrick?’ Marie asked after Liam had gone and the ensuing silence seemed to go on for far too long.

  ‘I’m OK.’ He didn’t look it. His face was still red and he was trembling with anger. ‘Can we go on the Internet d’you think, Ma? Me and Danny could log on to all sorts of interesting sites – it’d help with our homework. Someone has to come and fix it to the phone line.’

  Danny’s eyes lit up. ‘Crazee! Oh, Ma, that would be great.’

  ‘If you want, son.’ Marie was surprised, not so much by the request, but that Patrick should make it now when he was so wired up and angry over Liam.

  ‘I’ve got all the stuff about it in our room. Danny, will you go and fetch it, please? It’s on the bookcase or the desk, I’m not sure which. I think it might be in a brown envelope.’

  ‘Sure thing.’ Danny sped eagerly upstairs.

  ‘I’ll be having a word with Liam,’ Marie promised when she and Patrick were left alone. ‘I don’t suppose he realises you’re almost a man. He …’

  Before she could continue, Patrick broke in. ‘I think you could do with having more than a word, Ma. I think you could do with bolting your bedroom door an’all.’

  Marie felt a blush spread from the roots of her hair down to the soles of her feet. ‘I don’t know what you mean, son,’ she gasped.

  ‘I think you do, Mam. I heard you with the priest last night. Our dad’s hardly been in his grave a year. If I were you, I’d be desperately ashamed.’ He looked at her sadly, his face no longer red, his eyes accusing.

  ‘We didn’t do anything, son, I told him to go away.’

  ‘Then you took a long enough time telling him: a good ten or fifteen minutes by my reckoning.’

  ‘I don’t know what got into me,’ Marie breathed, which was the God’s honest truth. ‘I do feel ashamed for letting him go as far as he did. I’ve felt so ever since. Everyone thinks he’s me husband, yet he’s a priest.’ The words tied themselves in knots in her throat. For months now, she hadn’t known if she were coming or going, her head a muddle of mad thoughts that she couldn’t make sense of, yet refused to go away.

  Patrick was looking at her as if indeed she was completely mad. ‘When I was a girl,’ she continued, ‘there was this priest, Father Murphy. He was only young and as handsome as a film star. All the girls were madly in love with him – not just the girls, but the married women too. If he’d wanted, all he’d have had to do was snap his fingers and he could have had any one of us. He made us go weak at the knees. There’s nothing in this world we wouldn’t have done for him.’

  ‘Because he was a man or because he was a priest?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘A priest.’ Marie hung her head. It didn’t seem right to be talking to her son in this way. Upstairs, Danny could be heard searching the room for the Internet stuff that she suspected wasn’t there. Patrick had just used it as an excuse to get him out the way.

  ‘Priests are only flesh and blood like other men,’ Patrick stated. ‘It’s daft to put them on pedestals, invest them with some sort of magic and look up to them as if they were God Himself, vastly superior to everyone else. I’m surprised at you, Ma. This is the twenty-first century, you’re not a teenager, and I’d have thought you’d have grown out of it by now.’

  ‘I know I should have,’ Marie conceded, shamefaced. ‘I won’t do it again, lad, I promise.’ She felt as if a tremendous load had been taken off her mind. Like a silly little schoolgirl, she’d been blinded by t
he fact that Liam was a holy man and it had taken her seventeen-year-old son to make her see the light. ‘Your daddy’ll never be dead while you’re alive, Patrick. He was full of common sense, just like you.’

  ‘Tonight,’ Patrick said authoritatively, ‘you’re to bolt your door, just in case Liam has another try.’

  ‘The door doesn’t have a bolt.’

  ‘I know. I bought one this morning. I’ll put it on in a minute.’

  The conversation had been stilted all night. They were both inhibited by what had happened before – had nearly happened before – that they didn’t feel easy with each other any more.

  It was early when Gareth announced it was time he went home. ‘I haven’t done anything on me footy site for days.’

  ‘Don’t forget to take Tabitha with you,’ Victoria reminded him.

  ‘Where is he?’

  ‘On my bed, asleep.’

  ‘I’ll fetch him.’

  ‘It’s the room on the left at the top of the stairs.’

  Her room had windows at each end. The big double bed with ornate wooden boards at the top and bottom, sat beneath the window overlooking the square. There was an old-fashioned wardrobe and a chest of drawers to match, and a piece of furniture that was a cupboard with drawers underneath. His mother had one and he tried to remember what it was called – a tallboy, that was it. He wasn’t sure if you could still get them nowadays. The floorboards were badly in need of a fresh coat of varnish and there was a rag rug beside the bed.

  If there’d been anything on top of the dressing table and tallboy then it had been removed and the room looked very bare apart from one corner where, in stark contrast to all this antiquity, a computer stood on a metal desk that was heaped with books and files and paper. More papers had spilled on to the floor.

  This was where Victoria slept. Gareth went over to the bed – Tabitha was asleep in the centre of the rose-sprigged duvet. He knelt on the floor. ‘Time to go home, young man,’ he said, but Tabitha didn’t hear and slept on. He looked so vulnerable, Gareth thought, so tiny and isolated in the big stretch of flowered cotton, completely oblivious to the dangers that existed in the world outside.

  Just like Victoria. All her relatives had died or gone missing like her father. She had no one, yet she faced life with such cheerfulness and courage and innocence that it made him want to weep. In a few days, she was about to fly to a strange country where she didn’t know a single soul. A lump formed in his throat when he thought of all the terrible things that could happen to her in New York. He bent his head and laid it on the pillow where Victoria’s lay at night when she was asleep. ‘Please don’t go, darling,’ he whispered. ‘Stay here with me.’

  ‘I’m afraid that’s not possible, Gareth,’ Victoria said softly from the door. She came and sat on the bed. ‘I thought you’d fallen asleep.’

  ‘I was just thinking about how much I loved you.’

  ‘Don’t think it. Don’t say it. Don’t let it enter your head again.’ She looked terribly sad and terribly wise.

  ‘I can’t help it,’ Gareth groaned. He got to his feet, sat beside her, and took her in his arms.

  Victoria sighed and lifted her face to his. This is very wrong. If I wasn’t going away, I wouldn’t be doing it.’

  ‘Say you love me, Victoria.’

  ‘I love you,’ Victoria said, just as Gareth’s mobile rang.

  He groaned again, pulled it out of his pocket, and was about to switch it off when he saw Debbie’s name on the screen, but Victoria stopped him. ‘Answer it. It might be important.’

  ‘Gareth,’ Debbie said in a frightened voice. ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At a mate’s house.’ He did his best to sound considerate because she really did sound upset. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘I’ve just come home and there’s no sign of Tabitha. I’ve looked everywhere, but he’s disappeared. I thought you’d be here. I came back especially.’

  ‘I brought Tabitha with me. Don’t worry. I’ll be home in a minute.’ He rang off and made a face at Victoria. ‘I’ve got to go. Can I see you tomorrow?’

  ‘I should say no,’ she shrugged helplessly, ‘but I can’t.’

  When he entered Hamilton Lodge, Debbie flew into his arms. ‘I’m sorry,’ she cried tearfully, ‘sorry for everything. I couldn’t find Tabitha and I wanted to die when I saw you weren’t here either. Oh, Gareth! It was horrible.’

  Gareth patted her back and murmured, ‘There, there,’ in a kindly way, although all he could feel was irritation that the wife whom, until recently, he’d loved to bits, had interrupted him when he was about to make love to Victoria. He felt even more irritated when he noticed the two Per Una carrier bags on the floor. Debbie had been shopping again.

  ‘What’s the house like?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Very small, very modern, rather nondescript,’ Kathleen replied. ‘You’d hate it. The neighbours are nice, the ones I’ve met, that is.’

  ‘Well, at least it’ll be warm in winter. This place is like a fridge.’

  ‘We used to spend most of our time in the kitchen, didn’t we? I miss that kitchen, not that I’ve done much cooking so far.’

  ‘Do you miss me, Kath?’

  Kathleen could imagine the sweet smile on her husband’s face as he spoke, the way his lips curled around the words in a way she’d always found very appealing. She reached for an ashtray and put it beside her on the floor. Steve was asleep, it was nearly midnight, and she’d got up and phoned Michael because she needed someone to talk to and he was the only one she could confide in.

  ‘I think I must do. I miss the certainty of you. Steve said today that his wife had become part of him, so I suppose you’ve become part of me – and me of you.’

  ‘That’s a rather odd thing for Steve to say,’ Michael remarked drily. ‘Funny conversations you two are having.’

  ‘He feels guilty for leaving her. Apparently, she’s not stopped crying since he went.’ For the very first time, she wondered if she would have given Steve a second glance if Michael had been able to make love to her like a normal man. ‘I’m terribly mixed up,’ she told him.

  ‘You’re not the only one. By the way, our son rang this evening. He wants his mum and dad to come to Denmark in September for the weekend.’

  ‘Did you tell him about us?’

  ‘No, I thought you could do that, Kath. You can explain it better than me. Will we go together, or is that just not on?’

  ‘Oh, Lord, Michael, I’ve no idea.’ She doubted if Steve would take lightly to her going away with her husband when she was making such a fuss about him seeing his supposedly sick wife.

  Michael was speaking again, but she had to break in. ‘I’m sorry, I have to go.’ She put the receiver down with a crash. Steve had come into the room. If he’d noticed she’d been on the phone, he didn’t say, or perhaps didn’t care. He just grabbed her hands, pulled her feet, and carried her into the bedroom.

  ‘I’m going to make love to you all night long,’ he said in a voice husky with passion. His big hands caressed her breasts and almost met around her waist when he squeezed it. She shuddered with ecstasy and just lay there while he touched every part of her then did the same with his lips, bringing her body to the very peak of trembling delight until everything exploded and she tumbled back to earth with a rapturous cry.

  Then she did the same to him.

  The Burrows had been watching a video. Anna liked musicals best, or anything that made her laugh or cry. Tonight they’d seen Once Upon a Time in America, a film so hauntingly beautiful that even the cynical Ernest had felt moved. Almost four hours long, it was past midnight when he realized the curtains hadn’t been drawn.

  ‘The lights are on in the empty bungalow,’ he announced. ‘There’s a woman putting up the curtains.’

  Anna immediately demanded he turn her chair around so she could see. ‘She looks quite young. Go over there, Ernie,’ she said imperiously, ‘introduce yourself and ask if she’d li
ke a cup of tea. You never know, the gas and electricity mightn’t be turned on yet.’

  ‘There aren’t many things I wouldn’t do for you, luv, but that’s one of ’em. I’ve no intention of introducing meself to anyone at half past twelve in the morning. If she wants a drink, she’ll have brought a flask.’ He drew their own curtains quickly before the woman noticed them staring.

  ‘Sometimes, Ernie,’ Anna complained, ‘you can be not very nice. The poor woman might not have anywhere to sleep. I haven’t seen a furniture van arrive.’

  ‘Are you suggesting I go and offer her a bed for the night?’ Ernie smiled and raised his bushy white eyebrows. ‘I might end up in jail like that Rees-James geezer. “Eighty-one-year-old man accused of propositioning woman young enough to be his daughter.” Might even be granddaughter.’

  ‘Talking about that Rees-James creature, you were awfully brave this morning, Ernie.’

  Ernest wriggled uncomfortably. ‘You said that before, luv, at least half a dozen times.’ Sarah Rees-James had come over in the afternoon with the children to thank him profusely. He’d had to kiss the little girl’s teddy bear and Anna had made a show of herself the way she drooled over the baby. He’d been thankful to see the back of them.

  ‘Made quite a few quid today on the horses,’ he said.

  ‘Did you, darling?’

  ‘Thought we could go out tomorrow and buy one of them computers you’re after.’

  ‘Oh, Ernie,’ Anna cried. ‘You are an absolutely perfect husband.’

  He grinned. ‘Your wish is my command.’

  ‘But will we know what sort to buy, darling?’

  ‘I wondered if we could take Victoria with us? She’s not working at the moment. She’ll advise us and we can treat her to a meal.’

  Anna clapped her hands. ‘I’m already looking forward to it.’

  So was Ernie. It would make a pleasant change to their rather dull, uneventful lives.

  Not long afterwards they went to bed. He fell asleep immediately and began to dream about the time when their lives had been anything but dull …