by Marie Joseph
‘For ever,’ Delia amended. Wildly she glanced round the room. ‘He thinks that leaving me the house compensates.’ Pushing Lisa away from her, she stood up to begin pacing up and down. ‘The telephone hasn’t stopped ringing all day. The vultures are swooping down already.’ She turned on her heel swiftly, pointing a finger, stabbing at the air. ‘When they found his office closed this morning they began ringing here. Bookies, Lisa. Common men with common voices, issuing threats, promising writs. To me!’ Suddenly she gripped a half-moon table as if for support. ‘Over the last six months everything he’s touched at the Stock Exchange has failed. He’s bankrupt! Finished! So he’s run away.’ She turned on her daughter a cold, piercing gaze. ‘Now what have you to say in defence of your father?’
‘He wouldn’t have done it without telling me!’
Running from the room, head bowed, legs turned to water, Lisa scrabbled her way upstairs. In her room she glanced round, at her dressing-table, at her pillow, anywhere a letter might be. Then, finding nothing, she went along the landing to Angus’s room.
Half-open drawers, coat hangers hanging empty on the rail of the huge mahogany wardrobe, the tortoiseshell brushes missing from the dressing-table. All told their tale. She stumbled back to her own room, feeling dead inside. The only thing alive in her at the moment was terror. It was all adding up. Her father’s terrible dejection when he came home from Manchester the evening before. His drinking himself paralytic at the dance. The shouting anger spiralling up the stairs after Delia had come home. The nights Angus didn’t come home at all.
And the woman he’d gone with… . Lisa threw herself down on the bed, beating with clenched fists at the padded day pillow.
It was her mother who had driven him to that. Her mother and Uncle Patrick, Jonathan Grey’s father. If it hadn’t been for that Angus would never have found consolation elsewhere. Even in the midst of her grief Lisa’s mind spoke the dramatic phrases automatically. Her father had had a brainstorm. His mind had suddenly gone. He was ill. In spite of what Delia said about him, he was mentally sick.
He would come back. When he was better he would come back. Or he would send for her. She was his bonny wee lass. He loved her, and loving her meant he could never leave. Not for ever.
Downstairs the telephone rang, and went on ringing. Then stopped.
With a childish wail Lisa buried her face in the pillow, all anger spent. And as the dam of her emotions broke down, the tears came, hot and scalding, running over her cheeks into her open mouth, tasting of salt, and the bitterness of loss that was never to leave her.
Patrick Grey was a frightened man.
It was one thing to have a clandestine affair with a woman passionately eager for what he had to offer; it was another thing entirely to have her sobbing hysterically over the telephone, saying her husband had left her and threatening to kill herself if he didn’t go round and see her that night.
‘That will be all,’ he told his secretary. ‘Thank you, Betty.’
By the way Betty had taken her time gathering note-pad and pencil together, Patrick knew she suspected something. He could almost see her ears flapping beneath the coiled whirls of her old-fashioned hairstyle.
‘Now then,’ he said, taking his hand off the telephone receiver. ‘Steady on. I told you last night not to ring me at work again.’
‘He’s gone!’ Delia’s voice was high with hysteria. ‘When I got back last night we had a row, a terrible row.’
‘Mentioning me?’ Patrick’s handsome features sharpened.
‘He knew, for God’s sake. He’s known for a long time. He left a letter saying you would take care of me.’
‘He what?’ Forgetting to be circumspect, Patrick bellowed the two words. ‘I told you last night it had to finish. God damn it, I only took you out of the dance to stop you crying. I spelled it out. Didn’t you tell him that?’
‘I told him you would marry me.’
Patrick’s temper shot upwards like a lick of flame, flushing his face to an angry red. ‘You what?’ He ran a finger round his stiffened white collar. ‘I’m already married! What the hell are you talking about, woman?’
Suddenly, as the meaning of what Delia had just said struck home, he felt the bile rise in his throat. ‘When his wife died’, that was what the crazy woman at the other end of the wires was saying without putting it into words. He took the receiver away from his ear, hesitated on the verge of slamming it down, then said in a grim tight whisper, ‘Look here, Delia. What was between us was for fun. You knew it and I knew it. You were paying Angus back for his little wanderings, and I … well, you knew the score between Alice and me.’ His hand tightened on the black bakelite receiver until the knuckles shone white. ‘If you make any move to tell her, I won’t be responsible. I’d swing for you first. D’you hear me?’
Delia closed her eyes and swayed where she stood. Angus had always said that Patrick Grey was working-class, in spite of his money and status in the town. Angus could do a devastating impersonation of George Raft in a gangster film, and now, this very minute, Patrick was playing him for real. How Angus would have laughed!
The laughter coming over the wires froze Patrick’s blood in his veins. Oh, God, what a mess! What a stupid unnecessary mess. He’d always known that it was madness for a man to spit on his own doorstep, and Delia Logan was as unstable as a badly roped load on the back of a lorry. He should have known that, right from the beginning when she’d interpreted his heavy-handed flirting with the single-mindedness of a bitch on heat.
Through the glass-fronted panel of his office he could see his son Jonathan making his way through the piles of builder’s clutter on his way to the office.
‘I’ll come some time after eight,’ he said quickly, putting the receiver down.
At somewhere around half-past eight that evening Jonathan Grey found himself sitting in the passenger seat of his father’s car on his way to The Laurels.
The rain of the past few days had stopped and the sky was a clear washed blue. Patrick’s big hands were steady on the wheel, but his profile showed a nerve jumping jerkily in his jaw.
‘Delia Logan is a temperamental sort of woman. God knows what she’s likely to say or do. It’s good of you to agree to come along, son. It’s a messy business. Angus Logan allus had it in for me for not being in the war, but by God I can’t see me doing a bunk like he’s done.’ Patrick risked a sideways glance. ‘Whatever else I might be I’m not the sort of bloke who would walk out on his wife. Nay, the thought of leaving your mother to fend for herself makes me sick to my stomach, and I don’t mean because she’s an invalid. She comes first with me, lad, and allus will do. You understand?’
The words had a double meaning which Jonathan understood at once. He felt sorry for the man driving with grim concentration through the town and out to the Preston road. In spite of everything, Patrick’s devotion to his wife had always been beyond doubt. It was only during the past year that he had agreed to sleep in a separate room, and even now when Alice had a coughing spell during the night Patrick was there with soothing drinks, sitting by her side till she got off to sleep again.
Jonathan spoke quickly: ‘You must have guessed that Angus Logan was getting in deep with his gambling. It was obvious in Brittany that it had become an obsession with him. Will the police be brought into it? Won’t Delia want him brought back to face the music? There wasn’t much love lost there, was there?’
Patrick turned away from the main shopping centre into the long, straight road following the tram route. The tick in his face jerked feverishly.
‘She’s a lost unhappy woman.’ He seemed to hesitate. ‘But I don’t think she wants a scandal. Even though, from what she told me on the phone, Angus’s creditors are closing in already. That woman who cooks and does for them has gone already. Seems her wages haven’t been paid for months.’
‘And the kid? Lisa?’ Jonathan turned his head as the car drove past the Girls’ High School, an austere building set back on the l
eft. ‘She’s an awkward young devil, but she thought the world of her father. You should have see her last night when he was drunk. I felt she was pretending to herself that he was ill. Him going off like this must have shattered her.’
‘Aye.’ Patrick sighed deeply. ‘There’s nowt so queer as folk.’ He slapped the wheel with the flat of his hand. ‘Stick with me when we get there, lad.’ He swallowed hard. ‘As a friend of the family I want to do what I can, of course. But I’m making no promises. There’s nobody making me responsible for what’s happened. Your mother’s not to be upset, not for love nor money. Delia Logan knows where she stands, an’ that’s a truth she’s got to accept. Right starting from now.’
Jonathan’s dark, perceptive eyes contemplated his father thoughtfully. He was torn between a kind of ragged shame at Patrick’s persuasive, and what was to his son, cowardly way of reasoning. And yet … and yet the old man wasn’t a bad stick. Delia Logan had egged him on, Jonathan was youthfully convinced of that. She reminded him of a witch with those brooding eyes and slightly jutting chin. And as for keeping the whole sorry mess secret from his mother, well, he would go every inch of the way with his father down that road. It was just that the kid, Lisa, bothered his conscience somehow.
Still, men had to stick together at a time like this. As the car drew up in the drive of The Laurels, Jonathan punched his father on the shoulder in an affectionate gesture which said it all.
If Lisa was surprised to see Jonathan she didn’t show it. They sat in the sitting-room like characters in a stage play, Patrick advising on solicitors, urging Delia to hand over the money side to a good man he knew who would sort things out in no time.
Delia, in the space of one day, had stepped over the boundary into middle age. She was small, cowed, and very, very angry. Lisa looked plainer than ever, Jonathan thought, her nose pink-tipped and her eyes swollen with weeping. And yet his heart ached for her.
When Patrick asked in a pointed way if any other family friends had called to sympathize, Delia shot him a glance spiced with disgust.
‘Angus has been borrowing from all our so-called friends. There’s a drawer in his desk full of IOUs. How much did he touch you for, Patrick?’ Her voice dripped icicles. ‘Because the first thing I’m going to do when things get sorted out is to pay you back. Every penny.’
Jonathan saw his father flinch. ‘Angus never approached me,’ he answered stiffly, ‘and if he had I wouldn’t dream of … .’
‘Oh, but I would insist,’ Delia told him in a high, bright tone, and it was in that moment that Jonathan knew his presence as an unwilling chaperone had done the trick. Maybe his father had underestimated her. There was pride in the way she narrowed her eyes, staring at Patrick from beneath those strangely hooded lids.
‘Anyway, my father will be coming back.’ Lisa spoke for the first time. ‘Things had just got on top of him, that’s all.’ She glanced towards the door as if expecting to see Angus’s red head appearing round it. ‘He’d got mixed up with money worries, that’s all. My father would never leave us.’
‘Would you like to see the letter he left?’ Delia spoke directly to Patrick. ‘If you come with me through to the study I’ll show it to you.’
Immediately Patrick waved her back to her seat. ‘Nay, no need for that. What Angus wrote was private. He wouldn’t want one of his friends to read it, I’ll stake my life on that.’
He was making sure Delia didn’t get him on his own, Jonathan knew. His father was making it clear once and for all that if Delia Logan imagined she could rely on him, then she’d better change her mind. Fast. Sitting quietly in a corner of the big room, observing all and saying nothing, Jonathan was experiencing a reluctant yet unstinting admiration for his father.
He glanced round the room at the distempered walls, with their ziggurat frieze, the lampshades shaped like an artist’s impression of a lightning flash, the orange curtains and cushions, their shiny material stippled with black cubes. He compared the ugly modernity of it with his mother’s taste for Regency elegance. And he compared Delia’s hard, brooding looks with his mother’s fair, fragile prettiness. For a moment Patrick’s resolution not to be involved made simple and unerring sense. Callous it might be, cruel even, but Alice Grey, gentle and uncomplaining in her tenuous hold on life, must never, never hear a whisper of her husband’s affair with the deserted wife of Angus Logan.
‘That poor woman,’ she had said, as they left the house. ‘Yes, of course you must go, dear, and offer any help we can give.’ She had smiled at them from her high-piled pillows, her thin face alight with pride in her husband and son. ‘How like you, Patrick,’ her expression had said, ‘to hurry round at once like this.’
‘You’re a good man,’ she had whispered, as her husband bent to kiss her goodbye.
All at once Jonathan felt nauseated. ‘I think we ought to go, Father,’ he said in a loud voice. ‘Mother wasn’t feeling well. I think we ought to get back.’
They stood in the hall, the men uneasy and embarrassed, the women with blank faces. Unbelievably, to Jonathan, they all shook hands.
‘Thank you for coming.’ Delia’s voice was pitched on the verge of hysteria.
‘My father will be back soon.’ Lisa stared Jonathan out, smiling a tight little smile as he dropped his eyes. ‘Sometimes people have to run off, just for a while.’
They walked back to the car. Patrick rammed a trilby hat low on his head, his handsome face blotched red beneath the casually tilted brim. ‘Now I know how a rat feels as it swims away from a sinking ship,’ he said, as he switched on the engine. At the traffic lights he turned to his son.
‘Let’s stop off at the White Bull and have a bloody drink,’ he said.
Four
ON THE DAY Patrick Grey saw in the Weekly Times that The Laurels was up for auction to the highest bidder, along with its entire contents, he picked up the telephone, and spoke briefly to Delia.
‘Seems like Angus Logan, the bloody fool, had gambled his house away,’ he told his son later that day. ‘So I’ve offered Mrs Logan one of the houses in Mill Street. At a peppercorn rent.’ Patrick shuffled a sheaf of invoices on his desk into a neater pile. ‘The least I could do.’
Jonathan bit back what he had been going to say. So it was Mrs Logan now? He waited for more.
Without looking up, Patrick said: ‘I’d like you to take one of the vans and help with the flitting. Better I keep in the background.’ He swallowed. ‘Aye, better all round.’
‘It wouldn’t do for Mrs Logan to get any wrong ideas.’ Jonathan saw his father look up at that, his expression betraying his feelings.
Patrick’s voice was strong and cold as he said, ‘You know what that woman’s like. An’ she’s not latching on to me. No, by God, she’s not. Anyroad, the house in Mill Street is empty. It’s no skin off my nose.’
‘A bit of a come-down, though.’ Jonathan shook his head from side to side. ‘What about the kid? Lisa. She’s paid for to the High School, isn’t she? Will there be some sort of grant available to keep her on?’
‘She’s left,’ Patrick said. ‘She’s been stopping at home to look after The Laurels. And her mother.’ He unscrewed the top of his fountain pen and started to write. ‘That’s it, then. Oh, and I haven’t mentioned this, any of it, to your mother. I’m not having her bothered, and that’s final.’
‘How is your mother, Jonathan?’
‘Not very well at all.’
Jonathan looked past Lisa, down the long hall at The Laurels to where Delia was emerging from the dining-room at the back of the house. He knew that his mouth had dropped open, but he couldn’t help it. Lisa looked much the same as before, a bit scruffier maybe in a jumper at least two sizes too big for her; but Delia, since he had seen her last, had deteriorated to the point of being hardly recognizable.
Surely this wasn’t the elegant woman with fashionable short, curly hair, her thin legs sheathed in silk stockings in her favourite gipsy-tan shade, her make-up carefully applied. Now
she shuffled towards him in flat shoes, her dark hair frizzed at the ends and flat on top, her nose as pointed as if the flesh had fallen away on either side.
To Jonathan’s horror she advanced, hands outstretched, her mouth widening in what had once been her hostess smile.
‘How very good of you, Jonathan!’ Her laugh was superior and crushing at the same time. ‘There isn’t much to load on the van.’ She waved a hand. ‘All the rest is to be auctioned tomorrow. Just a few bits and pieces, that’s all. Lisa knows.’ She drew on the cigarette held loosely in one hand. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me.’
From the patch pocket at the front of her tweed skirt Lisa produced a typed list. Gravely she studied it, her head on one side. ‘I’ve put down here what we’re taking. The rest will be sold later on. I’ve packed our clothes in four cases, and the kitchen things are in a carton. The carpets we’re leaving, of course. Your father said the previous tenants left floor coverings and curtains behind. So it should be straightforward.’ She smiled. ‘It’s awfully good of you to come like this, Jonathan. My mother does appreciate it.’ Lowering her voice, she glanced down the hall. ‘She hasn’t been well, but she’ll perk up when we get settled. Then perhaps she’ll be able to take up her life again.’
From Mill Street? Oh, my God! Jonathan followed Lisa upstairs. The so-called previous tenants of Number 14 Mill Street had done a moonlight flit, leaving the house, according to his father, smelling of bugs and worse. Floor coverings and curtains? He glanced down at the thick pile of the Wilton carpet and sighed. More like paper blinds at the windows and worn oilcloth on the flag floors in the house they were going to.
‘I’ve rolled up the mattress, but I couldn’t undo these bolt things on the frame.’ Lisa was leaning over a bed, her plaits swinging round her flushed face. ‘I suppose you really need a spanner?’
Jonathan produced one from the pocket of his blue overalls.
‘What it is to have a man about the house,’ Lisa said gaily.