Masters of the House

by Robert Barnard

  “I wonder how long we could have got away with it,” Matthew said. “If she hadn’t started poking her nose in.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  That Woman

  “WHY, IT’S MATHEW, isn’t it? Matthew Heenan? I’ve been thinking so much about you all.”

  Matthew turned and saw the woman from the cemetery.

  He and Annie had talked things over, and they had agreed that they had to have, just now and again, some time to themselves: time to do normal things that children of their age did—visit friends, kick a football, mooch around the shops. So on alternate weeks one or other of them would be free after school on one day to do whatever took his or her fancy. It would be better all round for them to be seen, from time to time, doing normal things, not giving the impression that they were tied to the house. So at half past three Matthew had taken the bus along to Horsforth and was strolling along the main street, buying the odd tube of Smarties, gazing into a sports shop window and thinking about the approach of summer.

  “Yes,” he said, turning round reluctantly, but trying to hide it with a display of openness. “That’s right.”

  “I was at your mother’s funeral, remember?”

  “Yes. At the cemetery.”

  “And at the service, though you wouldn’t remember, there were so many there. Your mother was very well thought of—much loved.” The words were said flatly, as a mere formula, as if she couldn’t be bothered to make any effort to appear sincere to a mere child. “I was sorry not to be able to tell your father that at the cemetery.”

  “He was very upset, you see.”

  “So you said. And we could all see that. I’m sure everybody understood. Death takes different people different ways. I lost my own mother recently, so I know. I hope your father’s coming to terms with it now.”

  She spoke in the tones and phrases of the newspaper advice column, as if this was the closest she could come to imagining the emotions of grief and loss. But Matthew did not notice that. What he noticed—because his eyes were on a level with them, and had started noticing such things generally—were her breasts, which were full and round, like hard melons under the thin pink blouse. When he looked down, confused, he saw her legs—shapely, stockinged, attractive. He found himself blushing, hastily looked up again, and caught a half smile on her full, red lips. It was a smile that suggested they were sharing a shameful secret.

  “Oh, yes, he’s coming to terms with it. He’s got all of us to look after, you see.”

  “Of course. It must be a tremendous b—a tremendous responsibility. He’ll never have a moment to himself.”

  “Not really. There’s so much he has to learn how to do.” He should have stopped there, but during his repetitions of this sort of line he had become conscious of how overwhelmingly boring and overworked he made his father’s life sound. There was a danger of the Catholic ladies’ banding together in some sort of scheme to take some of the work off his shoulders. So he added, “When Annie and I are a little bit older he’ll be able to leave us and go out for a pint sometimes in the evenings.”

  The woman nodded, still with the half smile on her face that he had seen when he’d been caught looking at her legs.

  “That’s right,” she said. “In fact, I’m sure you’re quite old enough to baby-sit now.”

  “Dad says not,” said Matthew hastily.

  “Oh, I think he’s being silly. Overcautious. The eldest one in a big family is always good with the smaller ones. You get a sense of responsibility, don’t you?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I’m sure your dad would be all the better for a night out.” She smiled, her teeth flashing brilliantly through the two gashes of red. “I’m going to come round to your house and drag him out one of these days.”

  “Oh, I don’t think he’d go—”

  “We’ll see about that.” She smiled, but it wasn’t a joking kind of smile. “A man’s got to get out now and again. Maybe we should wait until my Rob’s home. But I’ll come round and see how you are—see if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Well—”

  “Ta-ta. Must rush. I’ve got to pick up a dress that’s being altered for me, and it’s nearly five.”

  And with a wave she clattered off down the street, her bottom wiggling under her tight skirt.

  That evening, when they were alone, in the precious time when they could unburden themselves, Matthew told Annie about the woman. By then he had had time to meditate the effect she had had on him. He ended, “She says she’s coming round to see if she can help.”

  Annie said with a confidence she didn’t entirely feel, “We’ll tell her everything’s under control.”

  “It’s not easy to tell her. She’s very pushy.”

  “Who is she, anyway?”

  “I’m not sure. She mentioned a husband called Rob. Did Dad used to go drinking sometimes with someone called Rob O’Keefe?”

  “I remember the name.”

  “I think this must be his wife.”

  “I don’t remember Mum having anything to do with her. What’s she like?”

  “Horrible!” He tried to get his thoughts in order. “Like she comes too close, puts herself all near you, and—”

  “You mean like—?”

  “Sexy. Like she always does that to any man she is with, so she does it even with a schoolboy.”

  Annie thought.

  “Perhaps that’s a good thing. I mean, if she’s that sort why should she concern herself with how we’re getting on, whether we’re fed and clothed properly?”

  Matthew could think of a reason, but he kept it to himself.

  It was as a logical consequence of that reason that Matthew decided that he needed to talk to Harry Curtin again. His father’s former employer was operating with a much-slimmed-down work force, but he was still in business. He had a son at the same school as Matthew; and on the pretext that his father might be looking for a job before very long, he found out that Curtin was working on the construction of a small block of offices off Town Street, Stanningley. Telling Annie he had something important to do which he’d tell her about if it came to anything, Matthew managed to be around there about knocking-off time. He kept watch from the doorway of a shop, and when Harry Curtin came out some minutes after his workmen Matthew ran and caught him up.

  “Hello, Mr Curtin.”

  Harry Curtin swung round and stopped.

  “Hello, Matthew. Didn’t expect to see you in this neck of the woods. What brings you here?”

  “Oh, I’ve been to see Mrs O’Connor at the Social Security office. I do a lot of that sort of stuff for Dad—he doesn’t understand about how to claim and that.”

  “Yes, he’s better with his hands, is your dad.”

  “That’s right.” Matthew had decided not to prevaricate, and he plunged straight in. “He’s explained about the overtime, Mr Curtin.”

  Harry Curtin shuffled, embarrassed.

  “Oh, did you understand . . . I didn’t mean . . .”

  “Well, I saw that you were surprised and that he hadn’t really been doing overtime like he’d told us.”

  Harry Curtin took a deep breath, still embarrassed but seeming relieved.

  “Well, I didn’t want to upturn the apple cart, not at your Mum’s funeral. So long as you’ve got it sorted out.”

  “He was making Christmas presents for us. The wooden train for Greg, and the doll’s house for Jamie. In a friend’s garage, so we wouldn’t know. He didn’t want to spend a lot of money last Christmas because he had a suspicion that he might be made redundant before very long.”

  “Well, that explains it, then, doesn’t it?” said Harry Curtin heartily. Too heartily? Matthew wondered. “Might have known it would be something like that. How are you all getting on now?”

  “Oh, fine. Dad’s learning all sorts of new things.”

  “I bet he is. It’s good to know he’s coping.”

  “Oh, yes. He did wonder if there
might be a part-time job in the future.”

  “Well, we’ll have to see. When the General Election’s out of the way things might pick up. It’d mean his hands were full.”

  “Oh, he’d have to get a bit of help in the house, but Jamie’s at day nursery now, and people are very good.”

  “It’s nice that they’re rallying round. I suppose it’s people from your church, is it?”

  “That’s right. They just drop in now and then to see that things are going on all right. I saw Mrs O’Keefe the other day.” From the corner of his eye Matthew saw Harry Curtin shoot him a look. “She said she’d be dropping by.”

  “Well, that’s nice. That’s very good,” stumbled Harry. He was conscious that he wasn’t very good with words when he was uncertain or embarrassed, and he was fearful that he had given something away to the boy for the second time. Matthew relieved him of his embarrassment.

  “Oh, excuse me—I think that’s Jason Maclntyre.” And he darted off down a side street after the figure of a boy whom he didn’t know from Adam.

  Matthew debated with himself whether to talk the matter over with Annie. He would have liked to have kept it from her, but really he didn’t have much choice. He had told his sister that there was something he was looking into, and it would be impossible not to tell her what it was. When she was onto something Annie could be very persistent. And from another point of view it was something of a relief to share his suspicions. Matthew felt all too often these days that there was a great and multifarious burden on his shoulders, one they were too slight to bear for long. So he told her that night when they were alone.

  “It was Mr Curtin at the funeral set me thinking,” he said.

  “At the funeral? You never told me.”

  “Well, that was because I was just thinking, wondering. When I mentioned Dad doing all that overtime last year he seemed surprised, and then he covered it up.”

  Annie frowned, not understanding.

  “Surprised? But that’s what Dad said he was doing.”

  “Yes—said he was doing. Well, today I took Mr Curtin up on it. I said that we’d found out that what Dad was really doing was making Christmas presents for us. And Mr Curtin seemed relieved it was all explained—or maybe relieved it was explained in that way, and we believed it. But then I just mentioned Mrs O’Keefe and he—well, he looked at me quickly.”

  Annie thought. She saw quite soon the direction his thoughts were going.

  “It’s not much.”

  “Then he got all sort of hesitant and stumbly and embarrassed. That’s when I took off.”

  “You mean it was like he knew something . . . about Dad and Mrs O’Keefe?”

  “Yes. Or suspected.”

  “That they might have been . . . having an affair?”

  “Yes.”

  There was a silence between them.

  “The bitch!”

  It was a word that their mother had occasionally used under provocation. Annie’s bitterness summed up feelings that had been growing in Matthew since the talk with Curtin.

  “Yes,” he said. “And what about him?” He raised his eyes to the ceiling. “Going with someone else while Mum was pregnant and sick and afraid she was going to die.”

  “I’ll never trust him again.”

  “There’s nothing left to trust. . . . But we’ve got to be careful about her.”

  “Why?”

  “Because she might be more persistent than other people. And if it suited her purpose she wouldn’t think twice about telling people about us if she knew what was going on here.”

  “So if she comes round we mustn’t show how we feel about her, you mean?”

  “No. And we mustn’t let her find out anything at all.”

  “That won’t be easy, not if she keeps coming round. How can we stop her if she does?”

  “I don’t know. . . . We’ll have to think about that.”

  • • •

  She came a week later. The doorbell rang about half past five, and there she stood, in a tight blue skirt just down to her knees and a revealing yellow blouse of the sort their mother used to say that married women didn’t wear. Her face was caked with pink makeup and her lipstick was shiny, disturbing. In fact, Matthew felt not only disturbed but intimidated.

  “Dad’s not here—” he began, but she pushed past them (they made it their habit, when possible, both to go to the door when they were uncertain who it was, but it had been to no avail in this instance) and now stood in the kitchen as if inspecting the preparations Annie was making for tea—sausages and mash.

  “My, I can see you’re a fine little cook! Your dad must be awfully proud of you.”

  “Dad’s not here.”

  “Well, I’ll just wait for him in the front room.”

  And she marched down the hall and into the drawing room, where Greg and Jamie were zooming round the floor playing with the (commercially manufactured) train Greg had got at Christmas. They looked at her with unabashed curiosity.

  “Oh, little dears,” she said, and sat down in one of the two armchairs. Matthew and Annie sat down, too, on the sofa opposite her. Annie was seeing her closely for the first time. She’s not dressed for a visit to a family that’s lost its mother, she thought. She’s dressed to attract—to attract men. She looks tarty. That’s what Mum used to call women who dress like that, and she was right. She’s disgusting.

  “Dad’s down at the Social Security office,” said Matthew, feeling he would have to find new places for him to go.

  “At this time of day?’

  “He’s got a special arrangement with Mrs O’Connor.”

  “Has he?”

  “And then he’s going on to Harry Curtin’s to talk about a part-time job.”

  “Doesn’t seem to mind leaving you on your own. You said he thought you were too young to baby-sit.”

  “Oh, at night,” said Matthew. “This is daytime. That’s different, isn’t it?”

  “Maybe,” said the woman, with a puzzled expression on her face. “So when are you expecting him home?”

  “We’re not really. He said it was a case of ‘expect me when you see me.’ ”

  As he said this, Matthew felt the sharp stab of reality: That was something his father had said very often during the months of their mother’s pregnancy. And he’d said it because he and this woman . . . The remembrance knocked another nail into the coffin of Matthew’s respect for his father.

  “Well, like I say, it’s obvious you can cope,” said Mrs O’Keefe, looking round the room and forcing a look of concern onto her hard face. “Looks clean and tidy to me. Mind you, I’m not one who believes in wearing themselves out dusting and scrubbing. My Rob always says, ‘It wasn’t for your skill as a charlady I married you, Carmen.’ Isn’t he awful? He’s on the rigs at the moment, so I get a bit of peace.”

  She looked around the room again, seeming to have run out of things to say, but still reluctant to go.

  “I suppose if you don’t know when he’ll be back . . .”

  “No, we don’t.”

  She thought, her face becoming calculating in the most obvious way.

  “I tell you what. It’s obvious he feels he can leave you on your own, so there’s no reason why him and me shouldn’t have an early evening drink. I think I’ll set a day—”

  “Oh, I don’t know—”

  “Say next Wednesday. I’ll be here next Wednesday at six, in the car, and we’ll go for a quick drink at the Lamb.”

  “I don’t think we ought—”

  The woman suddenly went still. The children were so used to occasional regular noises from upstairs that they had ceased to react to them. It took a second or so for them to realise that Mrs O’Keefe was reacting to the sound of the flush from the upstairs lavatory. When they did, they stiffened too. She looked around the room, where all four children were, and then directly at Matthew.

  “So who the hell’s upstairs, then?” she demanded.

  CHAPTER FIVE<
br />
  The Threat

  “OH, THAT’S JUST AUNTIE MAUREEN,” said Matthew.

  He asked himself when the woman had gone where the lie had come from. He asked himself the same thing fourteen years later when he was back in the house for the last time. He could not account for it other than as some kind of inspiration or gift of God. True, he had been naggingly conscious for some time that the lies he was telling were becoming horribly repetitive. And certainly, both he and Annie realised how easy it would be to be caught out in a lie, and perhaps he had prepared subconsciously a second line of fantasy as a defence. Yet it still seemed to him that Auntie Maureen was born in an instant, the creation of Mrs O’Keefe’s question, the generous gift of a beneficent power, giving them temporary breathing space. Matthew never lost his belief in that power, watching over them, protecting them, in spite of all that happened later.

  “Who the hell’s she?” Mrs O’Keefe demanded belligerently.

  “Oh, she’s just come over to help look after us for a week or two,” said Matthew.

  There was a moment or two’s silence, tense and strained, as the woman digested this. Only Matthew and Annie were conscious that Greg was looking at them too, an expression of puzzlement on his small face.

  “I thought you said you were alone in the house?”

  They took up the challenge together.

  “We are—as good as,” said Matthew.

  “She gets horribly seasick,” said Annie. “She’s useless for days afterwards.”

  “We’re looking after her more than she’s looking after us,” chimed in Matthew. “Always up and down to the toilet. I expect when she gets over it she’ll be more use.”

  “Pity she doesn’t fly,” said Mrs O’Keefe.

  “Oh, she’s terrified of flying.”

  “Then she should bleeding well stay put, shouldn’t she?”

  It occurred to Matthew that the woman believed in Auntie Maureen but resented her. No doubt it was the idea of another woman in the home of her—But he shut his mind to what his father was, or had been, to this horrible creature.