Lisa Logan

by Marie Joseph

  The room had a Regency décor with none of the ugly angular appearance of what Delia had loved to call the ‘structural look’. On a mahogany desk sat a Victorian inkstand in the shape of a flower surrounded by tiny leaves. It was an overly embellished object which Delia would have scorned to own, and yet to Lisa it epitomized the softly gracious beauty of the whole room. There was, she noticed in one swift glance, not a single hard line to break the gentle contours of furniture polished to a mirror shine, or to clash with the serenity of the hanging drapes.

  ‘They don’t look too bad, do they?’ Alice intercepted Lisa’s glance. ‘Drawn back they would last a little longer, I suppose, but pulled across they’re threadbare in places, and the next time they’re cleaned they’re going to drop to bits.’

  She began to cough, not violently, but enough to warrant a pressing of her thin hands over her chest as if to contain the spasm. ‘It’s the talking,’ she explained. ‘My husband tells me I talk too much, and my son say’s he’ll stick my mouth up with plaster one of these days.’ She held out her hand. ‘They cosset me too much, the pair of them. Said I shouldn’t be bothered with new curtains; but I don’t always do as I’m told. Now then, my dear.’ She nodded towards a small bucket chair. ‘Draw that up and we’ll look at these samples. I’ve an idea of what I want … at least I thought I had.’ She lifted a hand to a forehead beading with sweat. ‘Perhaps you could … .’

  When Alice began to cough again Lisa leaned forward and firmly took the pattern book from her. She realized now that she had come prepared to hate Alice Grey for being such a fool. For not finding out about her husband and Delia. For allowing her husband so much freedom. But now she saw that here was a woman so sick that if her husband had kept three mistresses she would have been none the wiser.

  ‘If this were my room,’ Lisa said softly, ‘I would have curtains in a silk the colour of rain clouds, not thunder clouds, more a soft pearl. Not in a stiff material, but soft, very full, maybe four times the width of the windows. Light and elegant, with curved pelmets covered in the same silk, and hanging down to the floor, not touching the window sills like these.’ Her eyes glowed. ‘And if money were no object I’d have this suite recovered in Regency stripes, dark mulberry and off-white. This pastel chintz is pretty, but it gives too much of a cottagey effect to a room that cries out for long, smooth lines and understated elegance.’

  ‘Well I never!’ Alice spoke quickly without coughing. ‘Fancy you having ideas like that!’ She smiled. ‘You know, I reckon Mr Carr’s a lucky man having you as his adviser. Did you learn all that at one of those art colleges? You don’t look old enough to have been to college though. Did that just pop out of your head?’

  ‘Out of my head.’ Lisa wrinkled her nose at the thought of what Mr Carr would have said if he’d heard her referred to as his adviser. ‘Do you like the sound of it, then, Mrs Grey?’

  Alice nodded, putting a finger to her pale lips in a conspiratorial way. ‘We’ll have the curtains just the way you said, and we’ll have the suite done up. And I won’t tell my husband how much it’s going to cost till it’s all done.’ Her cheeks flushed with sudden colour. ‘He’s so good to me, my dear. He’d give me the moon if it would get me better. They don’t grow them like my Patrick very often these days.’

  Lisa swallowed the lump in her throat. In different circumstances she could have liked this gentle kindly woman so much, even loved her. There was a childish warmth about Patrick Grey’s wife that made you want to put your arms round her and will her to get better.

  The very air of the gracious room was like a blessing, and Jonathan’s mother was like an angel with her fair hair a faded nimbus round her thin face. But she was already tiring. The effort of talking was proving too much for her. Lisa stood up abruptly.

  ‘If you don’t mind, Mrs Grey, I’ll get on with measuring the windows.’ Her trained eyes did a swift assessment. ‘Both windows are exactly the same size, so it won’t take long. If I lay this newspaper on this chair I can reach by standing on it. Then, if you agree to leave everything with me, I’ll be getting back.’

  ‘Yes.’ The whisper from the sofa was as soft as a sigh.

  ‘That’s my son coming back from the yard,’ she said after a while, as Lisa climbed down from the chair. ‘I can always tell the sound of his car.’ The thin lips curved upwards in a proud smile. ‘He drives it as if he were on the last lap of the Monte Carlo Rally. He often comes home early to make sure I’m all right.’

  Lisa spoke quickly, feeling her mouth tremble. ‘I have to go, Mrs Grey. Now. This minute.’ She was fighting the urge to rush from the room. ‘Goodbye, Mrs Grey. Forgive me, but I have to get back.’

  ‘Of course, dear.’ There was a slightly baffled expression in Alice’s blue eyes, but an innate politeness, born of kindness, made her stretch out a hand. ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you so much. You’ll come again, I hope?’ She sighed. ‘You remind me of someone, but I can’t think who. Please come again, my dear.’

  Lisa hesitated by the door, clasping and unclasping her hands round the large envelope of patterns in a frenzy of agitation. If she could only get out of the house before Jonathan came in from the garage – escape down the path and out into the tree-lined road. If she could get away without him seeing her… .

  As she stepped outside, shutting the big front door behind her, she came face to face with Jonathan walking towards her with his long, loping stride, his face completely abstract. He stared at her like a man in deep and sudden shock.

  ‘Lisa Logan! What the hell?’ His eyes were almost black, like hard stones, in his grim furious face. ‘How dare you come here?’ Giving her no chance to explain, he gripped Lisa’s arm, marching her quickly down the path, out of the wide gates and along the pavement, only stopping when they were well away from the house.

  ‘What have you been saying to her?’ A lock of black hair fell over his forehead as he jerked his chin back in the direction of the house. ‘If you’ve upset her; if you’ve said one single word about your blasted mother… .’ Heedless of the curious glances of a passer-by walking her dog, he dug his fingers into Lisa’s shoulders, forcing her back against a privet hedge. ‘God, you wouldn’t? Nobody could be that cruel!’

  Lisa stared into the blazing eyes, blinking at the violence she saw mirrored there, opened her mouth to protest, then heard him say, ‘What do you want from my father? Blood? Now you’ve seen for yourself the way she is, do you blame him for wanting to keep what went on between him and your mother a secret? She worships him, and he worships her. Yes, he does, and always has. Have you seen him lately, or did you prefer to come begging for more at the house rather than at his office?’ As he pushed Lisa even further back, she felt the prickle of the hedge against her back. ‘He’s a broken man, Lisa Logan. Like your own father, he’s come to the end of the road, but my father’s not quitting. By God, no! He’ll look after my mother and cherish her right to the end, and do you want to know why? Because she’s no slut like yours. My mother is pure gold, and she’s dying.’ His contemptuous gaze raked Lisa up and down, taking in the smart costume and the pristine whiteness of the collar with its scalloped edging. ‘You’re doing OK, that’s obvious, but then your sort always do. Leeches, that’s what you Logans are. Greedy and grasping for more, even from a woman living on borrowed time. I always thought you were an insufferable little prig, and now I know for sure. Oh, God, but you make me sick!’

  The injustice of it all finally lifted Lisa out of her abject misery and fear. In spite of her numbness, her quick brain was working like a ferment. Let Jonathan Grey find out for himself how wrong he’d been, how quick to judge and condemn – but she’d be damned if she’d explain.

  Out of the corner of her eye she saw a red bus trundling to a stop not ten yards away. Breaking free from his grasp, she ran to hurl herself on to the boarding platform. Then, as if expecting Jonathan to follow her, she clattered up the steps to the upper deck, causing the conductor to whistle after her in surpr
ise.

  It wasn’t until she had handed over her twopenny fare that the trembling began.

  She thought of her mother, crouching over the inevitable fire, smoking, always smoking, lighting one cigarette from another. Refusing to go out, sinking deeper into the well of bitterness, her ribs showing when she undressed and her stomach sticking out where once it had been taut and flat. She thought about her own bedroom in the cold damp house in Mill Street, with its view of the sloping back yard and the grey houses facing across the cobbled back. She reminded herself that only by the grace of Jonathan Grey’s father were they able to live there at all and, swallowing her pride, she acknowledged that if Patrick withdrew his patronage they would be out on the street.

  The only solution was work and more work, cutting down on her sleep, forcing herself to eat even less, making herself so indispensable to Mr Carr that never again would he threaten her with the sack. And some day, some far-off glorious day, they would pay Patrick Grey and his son back, every single penny, and with interest, she added, bitterly.

  With her father’s theatrical flair for seeing every crisis in terms of high drama, Lisa imagined herself facing Patrick Grey, throwing the money down at his feet. Jonathan would be there, standing in the background, his dark head bowed as he realized how badly he’d misjudged her, pleading with her to forgive him with a suspicion of tears in his eyes.

  Give me two more years, she prayed. Then she would be eighteen and have saved up enough money maybe to start up on her own. She could turn the little front room into a workroom with a trestle table and a machine beneath the window. She would have made a name for herself by then, and if Mr Carr didn’t like to see his customers going to her, then he could … he could jump off the end of Blackpool pier!

  She would be rich and she would be famous, and knowing what men were like she would best them at their own game. Every man jack of them, she added for good measure, her own eyes sparkling with angry tears.

  When the bus turned into the Boulevard she got off, muttering to herself that she would finish the curtains for the orphanage that same day or die in the attempt. She would then make a start on the silk curtains for Alice Grey. Lisa’s eyes lifted to the spring-lit sky as, imagining the feel of the soft material beneath her fingers, she was comforted and held strangely at peace.

  PART TWO

  Six

  ‘THERE’S GOING TO be a war,’ Richard Carr said. ‘That Hitler’s not going to keep his promise, no matter what old Chamberlain says. Starting up on your own at a time like this would be more than foolish, it would be proper daft.’

  He stared at the eighteen-year-old Lisa, trying to remember how she had looked when he had taken her on as a shop assistant two years ago. Then, she had looked like a skinned rabbit, all eyes, with tufts of badly cut hair sticking out from beneath an atrocious yellow beret. Now her hair swung shining clean, club cut almost to her shoulders, black in some lights and auburn in others. Gone was the washed-out cardigan and the seated skirt, and in their place she wore a plain black dress, darted at the bust to fit what he always thought of as her Edwardian figure, pinched in at the waist, and swirling in cross-cut panels round her shapely legs.

  Four times he had raised her wages, so that – including the commission she earned – she sometimes took home as much as two pounds. That was more than a lot of men in the town were earning, if indeed they were lucky enough to be in full-time work.

  Now Lisa left most of the sewing to the two machinists in the back room, concentrating on advising customers as to colour, the balance between patterned and plain, plus the contrast of texture. She trotted out such terms with confidence, as if she enjoyed the feel of the words on her tongue. Let a customer tell her exactly how much she could afford to spend and Lisa would set to work with merely a sketch of a room, using pattern to improve its proportions, concentrating mainly on neutral colours, with green or turquoise for a sophisticated effect, peach or coral if a warmer look was desired.

  ‘The last thing folks will be doing if war comes is doing up their houses.’ Richard heard the desperation creep into his voice. ‘But there’ll always be a need for curtains, and your job here with the shop is secure. Safe.’ He swallowed hard. ‘Look. I’ll give you another five shillings to stop on. What do you say?’

  With a total feeling of detachment Lisa watched a deep flush spread slowly over the smooth skin of her employer’s face. With a bit more colour in his face Mr Carr was more than passably good-looking, she told herself. Kind, too, when he let himself be, but aggressively masculine in spite of his daily preoccupation with spotted muslins and bolts of locally woven cotton.

  ‘I’m sorry, Mr Carr,’ she said, ‘but an extra five shillings a week isn’t what I had in mind. I want to be my own boss, make my own mistakes, and hopefully reap the benefit when I’ve learned from them.’

  ‘And take custom away from me.’

  Lisa’s laugh rang out, setting her eyes dancing and sparkling with amusement. ‘Now tha’s talking,’ she said, in such an exact mimicry of Miss Howarth’s flat vowel sounds that Richard’s own eyes twinkled.

  ‘Miss Logan, Lisa. Will you at least think it over?’ All at once he dropped his hectoring tone. ‘Will you come to my house, say on Sunday, for tea?’ He put up a hand as if to stop a stream of traffic. ‘That way we can talk things over without fear of interruption.’ He jerked his head towards the back of the shop where the whir of the sewing machines had suddenly stopped. ‘Maybe we can work out a different arrangement. If you’re still determined to strike out on your own at least I might be able to let you have materials at cost. I still know a thing or two about pricing, don’t forget. In most cases I buy straight from the mills like my father did in the old days. The world outside can be a very frightening place, you know.’

  ‘I’ve gathered that, Mr Carr.’ Lisa’s voice was very low, but just when Richard thought she was going to open up and tell him something about her fiercely guarded private life, she turned on him her strange sweet smile. ‘Thank you, Mr Carr. I will come to tea on Sunday. But I won’t change my mind,’ she added, moving away as a customer came into the shop. ‘It’s made up.’

  ‘Look, Mother, I won’t be away for more than three hours at the most.’ Lisa tried, not very successfully, to hide a sigh of exasperation. ‘If I stayed in I would be working on this new set of designs. One of the Entwistle girls is getting married, and her father is giving them a house up by the park for a wedding present, so they can afford to have new everything. Curtains, spreads, lampshades. They even want me to choose the colour scheme for the bathroom, right down to the towels and face flannels. I’ll be up till midnight working anyway.’

  Delia’s dark eyes were sly. ‘One of these days when you come back I won’t be here. Then you’ll be sorry.’

  ‘Where will you be, Mother?’ Lisa studied her reflection in the round mirror over the sink. ‘You know what the doctor said. It’s all in your mind, this aversion to leaving the house. Only you can overcome it.’ She turned round. ‘Mother! You’re not even listening to me. You remember what he said? Surely?’

  Wearily Delia passed a hand over her brow. ‘It’s these headaches making me a bit forgetful at times. They’re like a red-hot needle stabbing into the side of my head. I’ve got one now.’ Her eyes lost their brief lucidity and glazed over. ‘I remember a lot of things I don’t tell you.’ A small expression of triumph slid over her face. ‘Like when Patrick Grey’s son Jonathan came that day.’ She stared into the fire as if in a trance. ‘I remember that well, but I wasn’t going to tell you that, was I?’

  ‘Jonathan? Jonathan Grey came here? When? When exactly?’ Lisa felt a shock so acute it actually tingled in her armpits. How could her mother forget something like that so easily and readily? And deliberately? Horrified, she went to kneel down on the rug, trying to force the woman staring so abstractedly into the fire to meet her eyes.

  Delia smiled a deliquescent smile. ‘I shouted through the letter-box telling him to go away an
d never come near us again.’ She blinked. ‘Anyway, it was only a message from his mother, and I know all about her, don’t I? Playing the invalid to get her husband back. And she’s won, hasn’t she? Look at her, living in the lap of luxury, while I … oh, my God, I know her sort. If she saw how I’m living now she’d be laughing. A woman like her would think I’d got my just desserts. The mealy-mouthed faggot.’

  ‘Mother!’ Lisa’s voice was high with disbelief. ‘Mrs Grey is dead! She died at Christmas. Not last Christmas but the one before!’ She took hold of Delia’s wrist. ‘I wrote to … to Uncle Patrick to say how sorry I was. You remember that? You have to remember because you said I must be mad.’

  ‘And now you think it’s me who’s mad.’ Delia’s expression was complacent. ‘But he’s still paying the rent, isn’t he? And having the coal delivered.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Did you say Alice Grey was dead, Lisa? Dead for a long time?’ She began to wail, rocking herself backwards and forwards. ‘If your father knew how badly Patrick Grey had let me down, even though he’s free to marry me, he’d come back. He only went away because of Patrick, because he couldn’t share me with another man.’ With the tears sliding down her cheeks she smiled suddenly, like a child forgetting a grazed knee at the offer of a sweet. ‘You must write to your father, Lisa. You must write a letter pretending I don’t know anything about it. Not pleading. Just putting him in the picture.’ Delia turned back to her perusal of the leaping flames. ‘He wasn’t all bad, your father. Weak at times, but not all bad.’

  She was quiet for a moment, then in a conversational tone, she said, ‘Isn’t it time you were going, dear? It’s a long time since you went out to tea. You must tell me all about it when you get back.’