Leaning closer to the mirror she looked past her black suit with the straight skirt and fitted jacket, into the face reflected in the unforgiving light. Minute lines were beginning to appear around her mouth. So tiny that only she could see them. As yet. The effort of trapping words inside, of holding her thoughts hostage for years on end was beginning to show on her face. There were no lines around her eyes. She had never laughed enough to create them.
Turning sideways, she examined her figure. Still perfect. Unusual that she should feel a degree of satisfaction with any part of her physique. As she examined herself now, for a moment she was able to look through Andrew’s eyes. She saw her figure, honed to perfection, her legs, appearing even longer in her high heels. Her stock in trade, the tools of her craft. What made Andrew Ford different to any other man she had ever met was that he saw beyond her physical appearance, beyond the barriers she had built. He spoke to her, listened to her. Shit, she had shown him her precious picture of great-gran Harriet!
As Maxine stared at her reflection she saw the dark shutters fall over her eyes, the minute lines tighten imperceptibly around her mouth. Andrew could never know the real Maxine. He was enthralled by the image, out of love for the time being with his neurotic wife. If he knew the truth . . .
The intercom sounded. Maxine did not bother answering it. She just picked up her bag and went down to the lobby to meet Andrew. His admiring glance told her he liked her businesswoman image.
“Great that you were able to arrange a viewing so quickly,” she said.
“Your wish is my command,” he laughed as he ushered her to his car.
The nearer they got to Manor House, the more nervous Maxine felt. Suppose when she saw the portrait in reality, it did not resemble great-gran Harriet at all? Would she still think her plan was a good one then, would she still be interested in buying Manor House?
“Will Rob Trevor be there?”
Andrew shook his head. “He’s away in London for a few days. He left early this morning. Some art exhibition or auction. Something arty anyway. But I cleared the viewing with him before he left.”
Maxine relaxed a little. She would feel more comfortable seeing the house with just Andrew. Apart from the whole idea of opening a restaurant there, she needed to find out if Manor House was indeed part of Maxine Doran’s past. Part of her heritage.
* * *
Ella had tried everything to open the rusty old gate leading into the Ballyhaven fields. It looked as if a good kick could knock it to the ground, but it would not budge for her. Glancing along the length of the narrow country road to make sure she was alone, she began to climb the corroded bars. There was a precarious moment as she straddled the top of the gate, her leather-soled high heels slipping on the bars, her skirt riding up her legs. Thankfully she dropped, feet first, onto the ground on the field side. She should have gone home for walking shoes before coming here. In fact, she should not be here at all. Traipsing through her past in unsuitable footwear.
Keeping her eyes focused on the stand of trees in the distance, she began her uncomfortable totter through grass and rutted earth. She tripped several times but kept forging ahead. A thistle snagged her tights, a nettle stung. She kept going. When she reached the shade of the trees, she stood and breathed in the mustiness. Then she walked without hesitation towards the glade. The place where she and Andrew had celebrated their purchase of these fifty acres and their love for each other. She sat with her back against the big tree and remembered.
It had been summertime six years ago. They had just completed the sale of a block of flats. They had disposable income. For the first time ever. And they had bought these fifty acres from a farmer who was about to retire. They had plans. Maybe they would develop this site in years to come. Maybe they would build a huge house here and fill it with children. Some time in the future. Then they had sealed the bargain by making love. Under the branches of this big old tree, bathed by dappled sunlight. Ella had cried out. And so had Andrew. They had pledged eternal love and both of them had meant it at the time.
That moment, that sun-drenched, triumphant moment had been the highest point of their relationship. Their love had teetered on that brink for a while before sliding gradually downwards and then staying totally behind in the aftermath of the accident. Or had it been fading, losing its depth in the shallowness of day-to-day life long before Karen Trevor had crashed into their lives?
Angrily, Ella picked up a twig and snapped it in pieces. The signs had been there. They had gradually begun to speak more of work and had stopped talking about children. It was as if Andrew and Ella had ceased to be a couple and had become a corporation. Their relationship was one long business meeting, with a few shags thrown in for the sake of correctness. Affection had succumbed to acquisition.
Ella cried out, just as she had six years ago in this very spot. But the cry was one of anguish now. She remembered things she had not allowed herself to know at the time. Little things, like forgotten birthdays, like not sharing laughter any more, like not holding hands. It had all disappeared and neither of them had missed it or mourned its passing. The horrible truth, highlighted by the flood of memories, was that the eight-year marriage of Ella and Andrew Ford was dead. As dead as Karen Trevor and her beautiful little boy.
Ella was suddenly filled with new understanding of why she obsessed about Karen, about the accident. By focusing on that, she could blot out other traumas. She had known before the crash that she and Andrew were in trouble and had not wanted to face it. She did not want to face it now either but she could no longer deny the truth of it. Nor would she.
Reaching into her bag, she got a tissue and make-up and tried to repair the damage to her tear-stained face. She did not succeed very well. Her eyes were still puffy and full of pain. The deceit was what really hurt. So Andrew had fallen out of love with her. They had been very young when they met. Freshmen in college. Perhaps they had just grown in different directions. But having an affair? Lying to her? To hell with him!
Tucking her bag under her arm, she began her trek back across the fields. It was easier now. Anger gave her impetus.
She attacked the climb over the gate, throwing her leg over the top with abandon. She was sitting there, her skirt right up to her panty line, when a car came speeding along the road. Jason Laide tooted the horn and jammed on the brakes. Furious, Ella tried to pull down her skirt and at the same time dismount the gate with dignity. She failed on both counts, landing awkwardly on the road and managing to twist her ankle in the process. Jason jumped out of his car and ran to her side.
“Are you all right, Mrs Ford? I’m sorry if I startled you.”
Ella took the hand he offered and stood up straight with as much pride as she could muster. She had to bite back her angry retort. He was, after all, a very important client.
“I’m fine, thank you. What are you doing out here, Mr Laide?” she asked.
“Actually I’ve bought the little pub in Ballyhaven village. Do you know it?”
Ella nodded. It was a dingy little bar, not much changed since it had first been opened in the 1950’s. God! Was Jason Laide intent on buying up the whole country?
“Would you like to come there now? Let me buy you a drink, a bowl of soup, something to apologise for scaring you?”
Ella wondered if he noticed that she had been crying. Of course he had. Maybe he was just displaying that gentle streak she had seen in him the first time they met. She smiled at him and tried not to let the pain of her ankle show.
“I’ve an appointment this afternoon but a quick bowl of soup sounds good. I’ll meet you in the pub.”
“Can you drive with that ankle? Would you prefer to come with me?”
“I’ll be fine Jason, thanks. It’s my left ankle and anyway my car’s automatic.”
Jason smiled at her as she got into her car. He almost rubbed his hands together in glee. Well! Feck Maxine Doran! He might not need her after all. Not for the site in Ballyhaven anyway. It seemed l
ike Mrs Ford was vulnerable at the moment. Getting her to agree to the sale of the fifty acres should be a piece of cake.
Chapter 12
It was a mild morning but before Maxine left the taxi she tugged her hat low on her forehead and pulled up the collar of her coat. As she paid the fare she carefully examined the driver for any signs of recognition. There were none. He obviously did not know her. Or else, more likely, he did not care who his fare was as long as he was paid.
“Will you collect me here again in an hour’s time, please?”
He nodded and drove off, leaving her standing in the surroundings which had once been so familiar to her. The place she used to call home. Looking around she noticed that the buildings had changed. A shopping centre, its windows barred and shuttered, now sprawled along the area where the tower block flats used to be.
She began to walk, heading back towards the older streets, to where the artisan cottages huddled together under the chimneystacks of the old steel foundry. The streets got narrower and the graffiti more explicit. She kept her head bowed but then everybody around here walked with bowed head. To meet someone’s eyes was to issue a challenge.
Three pairs of legs, moving towards her in unison, came into her line of vision. As they neared, Maxine clutched her bag more tightly under her arm, afraid to look up. Maybe it was just a group of innocent kids, on their way to play basketball. Nearer now, she saw that they were all wearing pants with the legs so long that they trailed over the heels of their shoes, fraying from the constant friction with tarmac. The group stayed in line on the pavement. They were not going to give way. Maxine veered to her right and walked on the road. One of them jeered. Another whistled. Maxine walked quicker and did not slow down until she came to the narrow turnoff which led to the inappropriately named Mountain View Terrace. The only mountains visible from this row of red-bricked dwellings were made of concrete.
She stood for a whole minute outside the door of number six before finally raising her hand and knocking. The bang echoed hollowly around the square formed by the cottages. A curtain twitched on a window a few doors down and Maxine wondered if the Dunphys still lived there. She burrowed her face further into her collar and turned her back on the house of twitching curtains in case Assumpta was the person doing the peeping. Assumpta had always been number-one gossip in this area, assiduously gathering and spreading information. If anyone were to recognise the tall woman knocking on the door of number six it would be Assumpta Dunphy. But then, not even Assumpta would link the skinny, shorthaired child Maxine had been to the tall elegant woman she had become. If Assumpta thought about it at all, it would be to tut and maybe gloat at the rumour that the skinny child from number six had come to a bad end on the streets of London.
Maxine knocked again, more loudly this time. Assumpta Dunphy opened up her window.
“You’ll have to keep knocking. Paddy is probably still in bed.”
Maxine heard a shuffling inside the door. Someone muttered, mumbled and then fumbled with the latch. The door opened a slit. Paddy Murphy peered through the narrow opening. When he saw who was standing there, his sleepy eyes opened wide.
“It is you, isn’t it?” he asked. “What’re you doing here?”
Maxine grabbed the door, opened it wider and slipped inside. The smell of stale cigarettes and alcohol assailed her as she stood in the tiny hallway. Paddy, drool sliding from his open mouth, was staring wide-eyed.
“Get dressed. I want to talk to you,” she said, trying not to look at the wasted figure of her father. When last she had seen him he had been taller, stronger. Eight years younger. She pushed past him now into the kitchen. It was a mess. Discarded take-away cartons, empty bottles and overflowing ashtrays littered every available surface and the sink was piled with ware.
“Did you come here just to look down your nose at me again?”
Maxine turned around and regarded her father. The stubble on his chin was white and the head that used to have a magnificent shock of auburn hair was sparsely strewn with lank strands. Stains dotted the dressing-gown draped over his stooped shoulders.
“Of course not,” she said with as much conviction as she could muster. “I just came here to ask you a few questions. What’s wrong with you? You don’t look well.”
“What in the fuck do you care? You turned your back on your family a long time ago. Not good enough for you. We were never good enough for you, were we? Not your mother, your sisters and certainly not me. Too muck-common for Marie Murphy and her notions, weren’t we?”
Marie! Marie Murphy. The name fell over Maxine like a thick fog, smothering her, blanking out her years of pride and achievement, her success, her money. Marie Murphy, the skinny, lanky child with a driving ambition to escape from the meanness and vulgarity, the crudity of Mountain View Terrace. The little tramp who sold her soul for freedom from poverty. Maxine’s legs began to shake. She flopped down on the chair nearest to her, not noticing that it was piled with newspapers.
“You broke your mother’s heart!” Paddy accused. “What kind of a daughter wouldn’t send her mother a birthday card? Wouldn’t even come to see her when she was dying?”
“I did. I saw her in the hospice,” Maxine whispered.
Paddy was quiet for a moment, absorbing this bit of information. “You snuck in when we weren’t there, is that it? Hung around waiting for your common family to go away? You’re a disgrace to the Murphy name! Why weren’t you at her funeral?”
“I was in America when she died. Working.”
“Bullshit! You should have come home. If you had any streak of decency in you, that’s what you would have done.”
Tears began to well in Maxine’s eyes as her father’s words trawled up memories of that lonely, guilty time. The model agency had sent her away on assignment just before the burial. They had probably been afraid she would go to the funeral which was sure to have been drink-sodden. The agency had invested a lot of time, PR expertise and money obliterating her Mountain View Terrace background, creating a mysterious, barely hinted at, sheltered childhood lived somewhere on the north side of the city. A background to match her transformed appearance until even she did not recognise herself any more. They had turned the skinny child into a beautiful woman, the poverty-stricken girl into wealthy socialite. It had been easy for Maxine to go along with their scheme. It was what she wanted too.
Maxine had tried to mourn her mother, tried to feel sadness at her passing. Instead all she had felt was pity for the suffering that cancer had inflicted on the woman and a huge regret that they never had, nor could they ever have had, a mother-daughter relationship. Any relationship.
“Good job Jason Laide looked after us. Lucky for you too. He persuaded your sisters not to go to the papers and tell them what a bitch you are. He still keeps them in line. Not that they’d betray you anyway. They’re real Murphys. Loyal to the death, even though you don’t deserve it.”
Maxine clamped her lips tightly shut. She could have told her father that she had paid for her sisters’ silence. Was still paying for it. That the pension he thought Jason Laide was so generously providing for him came out of her pocket, that it cost her more every time one of her sisters decided they must go to the papers. She had furnished their houses, paid for their holidays and was obviously providing plenty of drinking money for her father. She owed them nothing. And they believed they owed it all to Jason Laide.
“I can’t work for Jason any more,” her father said. “I’ve arthritis. But he still looks after me. He has more loyalty to this family than you have.”
Loyalty! Jason! Jason the carer. The protector. Could her father really be that naïve, that stupid? He had worked for the scumbag long enough, loading and unloading his lorries, driving his forklifts, sweeping his floors. Didn’t he know what a complete shit Jason Laide was, what an uncaring, cruel user he could be? The man standing over her in the filthy dressing-gown was no longer her father. He had sunk even lower than the loud, aggressive, hard-drinking man
he had been in her childhood. The cunning in his rheumy eyes was an animal cunning. It was all about where the next drink was coming from. Maxine knew then that the silence money she was paying via Jason Laide was killing her father.
“Get dressed, Dad,” she said quietly. “I’ll make some breakfast. We’ll talk then.”
Sensing that his daughter was not going to take no for an answer, Paddy shuffled off to dress. Maxine rang the taxi company and cancelled the return car she had ordered. It would take a lot longer than an hour to clean up here. She started by dumping the take-away cartons and empty bottles and washing the ware. Then she boiled kettles of water and added a generous dash of washing-up liquid, the only detergent she could find in the chaos, and scrubbed until she considered it safe to have a cup of tea in the small but now clean kitchen.
Finding a loaf of relatively fresh bread, she popped some in the toaster and put on two eggs to boil. When her father came to the door of the kitchen he looked around in surprise.
“It’s like as if your mother was back again,” he said.
He sat at the table and waited for Maxine to serve him. Just like her mother used to do. Even though Eileen Murphy had been ten years younger than her husband she had always looked as old as him. Having four daughters one after the other, Maxine being the youngest of them, had taken a toll on her. And looking after Paddy and matching him drink for drink had done nothing to improve her health.
As Maxine made tea for her father now she noticed that he seemed even thinner in his clothes and his skin had an unhealthy yellow pallor. She put the mug of tea and the boiled eggs and toast on the table in front of him and sat across from him.
“Have you been to see a doctor, Dad? Are you on treatment for your arthritis?”
Ebb and Flow Page 13