by Marie Joseph
So he signed yet another contract, knocked down another row of houses, built another block of concrete monstrosities, worked at his desk until the print blurred before his eyes. Then he went home to a loveless marriage and a wife who now spent money as if it had indeed grown on trees.
‘Get on with your life,’ he would tell himself. ‘What else is there to do?’
PART FOUR
Ten
IN 1958, WHEN Irene Carr was twenty-eight, she came home one day from the junior school where she taught the mixed infants and, marching into the large front room of the red-bricked house, held out her left hand.
‘I’m engaged,’ she announced baldly.
Lisa, working that day from home on a set of sketches for her first mannequin parade, turned from her drawing-board.
‘To Edwin Bates? Oh, love, I am pleased. I never imagined you were as serious with him as all that.’
For a moment the puny, tweed-clad man, a fellow teacher at Irene’s school, appeared in Lisa’s mind’s eye like a puff of ectoplasm by her stepdaughter’s side. Hardly reaching Irene’s chin, an ineffectual little man in his middle forties with a moustache too big for his face, Lisa had never dreamed he could be a possible suitor. A born bachelor, she would have sworn, but now Irene was showing off his ring, an opal set in a raised claw setting. Her birth stone, Lisa remembered.
‘I’m really glad,’ she said again. ‘Edwin strikes me as being such a kind man. I always have thought that men who teach very young children must be special. Patience,’ she went on, ignoring Irene’s stony expression, ‘that’s the quality they have. Infinite patience and gentleness. I’m so happy for you.’
‘Well, you would be.’ Sitting down on the sofa, Irene spread the full skirt of her shirtwaister dress. ‘It means I’ll be leaving home, and that’s what you’ve always wanted, isn’t it?’
‘That’s not true,’ Lisa said insincerely. She had stopped trying to love this strangely embittered young woman a long time ago, and their relationship had developed into a resigned acceptance of each other’s presence. There were no rows, no more fierce confrontations. A wry smile lifted the corners of Lisa’s wide mouth. ‘Well, maybe you’re right. It is time you had a place of your own.’ She pushed the drawing-board aside. ‘You must let me make your wedding dress.’
With an expert professional eye she assessed the waistless, lumpy figure, the round face seemingly devoid of cheekbones and topped by a short floss of spun-gold hair. ‘I’ve got it! The new sack line skimming your waist will be perfect.’ Her eyes narrowed as she concentrated. ‘We mustn’t cover your hair with too much veil. Maybe a tiny coronet with a circular veil fastened with a spray of orange blossom.’ Her voice came alight with enthusiasm. ‘Oh, yes. It will be such a joy to me to make you a lovely dress. See … I’ll make a rough sketch. You have such beautiful skin, so I’ll cut the neckline fairly low… .’
‘No!’ Irene cried out in immediate anger. ‘You’re not turning me out like a dog’s dinner. I refuse to let you! What do you want? To use me as a walking advertisement for your everlasting fashions? “The bride wore a Lisa Logan dress.” Is that what you’d like to see in the paper? You’ve always sneered at the way I dress. Yes, you have. Even when I was a child you’d have starved me to make me as thin as one of your flamin’ mannequins if you’d got the chance. You patronize me. And I won’t be patronized!’
‘I’ve never sneered at you.’ Lisa twisted the pencil round and round in her fingers. ‘I would have been proud of you, if you’d let me be. I know you’re a marvellous teacher, and I hope you and Edwin have lots of children of your own. You need someone of your very own, Irene, and Edwin will make a wonderful father.’
‘Better than yours did!’ A blush like a scald rose slowly from Irene’s thick neck, suffusing her face with colour. ‘And at least when I do have a baby I won’t neglect it. When my baby comes I’ll stop work to look after it. At least I have my priorities straight.’
‘Irene.’ Lisa spoke softly, determined not to lose her temper. ‘Do you really believe that I neglected Peter? Has he grown up the way he has, winning a scholarship to Oxford, turning out into the well-adjusted independent young man he is, because of lack of care? Be honest now. Have you ever known a happier being than Peter? Hasn’t it been better for his development that he had a mother vitally interested in a challenging career rather than one who stayed at home feeling frustrated?’ She sighed. ‘Can’t you understand that there’s something inherent in me forcing me to succeed?’ The grey-blue eyes were pleading. ‘Just for once, Irene, talk to me, not as if you were a child and I was your wicked stepmother. You’re only ten years younger than me. Do you honestly believe I neglected you?’
‘Millie brought me up.’ Irene’s tone was flat, the dolly-blue eyes as hard as glass marbles. ‘If my father hadn’t met you and become infatuated …’ she corrected herself, ‘… obsessed, he would have married Millie.’ She glanced over her shoulder at the closed door. ‘Oh, I know you think of her as a servant, but she was living with my father till you came on the scene.’ The creamy neck deepened again to crimson. ‘You told him a hard-luck story, and he stopped Millie staying overnight. He put her in her place good and proper, but being the way she is she still couldn’t bear not to see him every day. So she stopped on as housekeeper, coming in every day. That’s what real love means. She demeaned herself, just to be near him, doing the work you should have done if you hadn’t been determined to go out to work making money we don’t need. You just want to be famous. Millie only wanted to be his loving slave.’ Tears sparkled and were quickly blinked away. ‘Millie says my father is going to be ill if he doesn’t stop working so hard, influenced by you, but I don’t expect you’ve even noticed. If you want the truth, I think of Millie as my mother! I always have, and I always will!’
When she jumped up and left the room in a graceless, plodding run, Lisa sat quite still, gripping the pencil hard between her fingers. Like a hollow, sad echo, Irene’s words lingered: ‘Millie was living with my father till you came on the scene.’
Lisa stared unseeing out of the bay window at the small front garden with its high privet hedge fronting the lawn. Richard had said … he had admitted that his relationship with Millie had been more than that of housekeeper and employer, but it had been only once, he had sworn. One of those things, he’d inferred. And all the time the dour woman with the untrue eyes had been his mistress. The old-fashioned word slipped naturally into Lisa’s fevered thinking. She shivered as if a damp chill had suddenly seeped from the cream-washed walls.
But Irene had been a mere child. Eight years old. How much could a child of that age have known about what went on behind a closed bedroom door?
And Millie? Millie with the smooth face, the tall, willowy figure, the devious slipping eyes? Oh, yes, she would have waited. Bided her time, grown older along with Richard, knowing that in the fullness of time he would have capitulated and married her.
As usual when distressed, Lisa’s thoughts came out in articulate platitudes. She sighed heavily. What chance had she ever had in this house with all that brooding devotion emanating from the kitchen?
It was a long time now since Richard had stopped wanting to make love to her. She was fully aware that the physical side of their marriage had held it together. She also accepted that nothing had been left between them to compensate. He would never understand the strong emotional urge to make and keep money that inspired her material ambition. And now it was too late.
Or was it? Lisa began to tremble. At thirty-eight she was still a youngish woman. She could start afresh on her own now that Peter was grown-up. She could … oh, yes, she could.
And starting right now she would go and talk to Millie.
But in spite of her resolution her heart was beating with dull, heavy thuds as she walked through the hall into the breakfast-room and on into the scullery beyond.
Millie was ironing. She was ironing the jacket of Richard’s striped pyjamas, paying it as muc
h attention as if it were one of his white go-to-business shirts. Lisa felt pity well up inside her as she looked at the still slim woman, past her sixtieth birthday, but with scarcely a thread of grey in her high-piled hair.
‘Millie?’ Lisa’s voice sounded alien, even to her own ears.
‘Yes, Mrs Carr?’ The iron slid silently round the collar. The untrue eyes lifted for a second. ‘We’re eating cold tonight. I hope you don’t mind.’
There was a tap dripping in the stone sink and it gave Lisa an excuse to turn away.
‘Millie …’ she said again, as the door bell rang, a harsh electric jarring, as if someone had kept a finger there, cutting off for ever what Lisa had been going to say.
The policeman standing there played his distasteful role according to the rule book.
‘Mrs Carr?’
Lisa nodded.
‘Are you alone?’
‘No. Why?’
But even as she asked, Lisa knew what he had come to say. And when he told her, an immediate numbness settled on her, blanking her mind to the meaning of his words.
‘It was in the street,’ the policeman said. ‘Quick and sudden.’ He coughed apologetically. ‘Witnesses said your husband just fell down as though he’d been pole-axed.’ He jerked his chin towards the police car standing at the kerb. ‘If you’d like to come with me, I’ll take you to the hospital. To where he’s lying temporarily.’ His glance went over Lisa’s shoulder. ‘Your mother? Perhaps she’ll come with you? It might be better… .’
Millie’s scream rent the air like the vicious tearing of a sheet of emery paper. ‘He’s dead! Oh, God! Go away! It’s not true! Go away and stop your lying! It isn’t true! I won’t believe it. Oh, God, help me! Someone help me. Please!’
Irene got to her before Lisa could bring her leaden limbs to move. Standing there as still as if she’d been carved from stone she watched them sway together, clinging, crying, till Millie’s screams died to low moans, mingling with Irene’s desperate sobbing.
The young policeman’s mouth dropped open as Millie pointed a finger at Lisa.
‘She doesn’t care! She’s never cared! Look at her, the cold devil! All she’s ever cared about is herself! Oh, Richard … Richard!’
Sinking to her knees, Millie tore at her hair, the immaculate high-piled hair. Lisa watched in detached horror as it came loose to fall round her face and down to her shoulders.
‘Unfasten her dress.’ The policeman stepped inside the dark panelled hall. ‘A glass of water, love. Where’s the kitchen? Through there?’
Irene spoke to him, ignoring Lisa. ‘I’ll see to her.’ Gently she raised the hysterical woman. ‘Come with me, Millie. Upstairs. Come and lie down. I’m here. Come on. Come with me.’
‘I’ll get my coat.’ Lisa’s voice was dull and expressionless. ‘Just give me a minute.’
There were no tears. The pain inside her set her features into stony indifference. As the police car drew away from the kerb a damp fog hung over the rooftops of the neatly spaced houses set behind high privet hedges. She didn’t speak a word.
The tears came on the day she picked Peter up from the station on the morning of the funeral.
‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered. ‘It’s seeing you, love. I’ll be all right in a minute.’
Peter put his arms round his mother. His own tears had been shed in the privacy of his room at the college. He was wearing a black tie. Lisa could see it at the open neck of his duffle-coat, and somehow the sight of it had opened the flood-gates of her grief. Much to Richard’s disgust, Peter had never been a tie man. His hair, his vivid red-gold Logan hair, straggled long over his collar, and that too had driven his father to distraction.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ Richard had once shouted. ‘What do you think you look like?’
‘As a matter of fact, Christ wore his hair quite long, Father,’ Peter had retorted.
‘You know, Mother,’ he was saying quietly now, ‘I never really knew him.’ His rather prominent Adam’s apple moved up and down in his thin neck. ‘Oh, I loved him, because he was my father, but I never got close, not really close.’
Lisa moved away and mopped her eyes with a handkerchief. Sitting side by side, they stared through the windscreen at the grey winter’s day, then, as Lisa stretched out a hand to switch on the ignition, Peter said unexpectedly, ‘Why did you marry him, Mother? You had so little in common. I’ve often wondered.’ He smiled at her shocked face. ‘Oh, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that’s a terrible thing to say on the day of his funeral; but Father dying hasn’t turned him into a plaster saint. He was always trying to diminish you, to make light of what you’ve achieved. He’d put you down in company, make you look foolish, and that you’re certainly not. You stayed with him because of me, didn’t you?’
A boy like this, to have known so much, to have known and said nothing… . Lisa held her breath, wondering what was coming next.
‘He was a good father. A better one than most. But what I could never understand was the way he sided with Millie and Irene against you. Oh, not openly, but in little subtle ways. I’d have tackled him about it before I went away if I hadn’t known it would’ve been a waste of time. I wasn’t exactly afraid of him, but I was sometimes afraid of incurring his displeasure. He was a gentle bully, if there’s such a thing.’
‘Well … well… .’ Lisa turned to look at the gangling boy, huddled deep into the duffle-coat, the scars of a youthful bout of acne showing faintly on his smooth cheeks. ‘Why have you waited until now to say all that?’
‘Because I could see you had worked out your own salvation, and because that is what life’s all about, isn’t it? A person working out their own salvation, making a marriage work or letting it go. But I ached for you, Mother. There were times when I really ached for you. There wasn’t much in it for you but your career, was there?’
The kindness in his gruff voice, the understanding, the perceptiveness, caught Lisa unawares, so that the tears filled her eyes again. ‘Thank God I’ve got you,’ she wanted to say, but swallowed even the thought. If there was one thing she had to do right, that thing was to send him back the next day free, unburdened by a widowed mother who relied on him for emotional comfort.
‘I wasn’t going to tell you until after the funeral,’ she said, ‘but I’ve made up my mind to go away.’
Now it was Peter’s turn to look surprised. ‘Where to, Mother?’
Lisa fiddled with the button at the neck of her plain black coat. ‘First I’m going to settle the house and the shop – your father’s shop – on Irene. When she marries she will have a home, and Millie …’ she tightened her lips, ‘… Millie will stay on, I’m sure. Irene will want that.’ Her voice was high and brittle. ‘They’re very close, you know. Your father would have approved, I’m sure.’
Peter’s expression was noncommittal, but she went on quickly, daring him to pass comment. Some things were sacred surely; most things she would discuss with this too-wise son of hers, but not that, not Millie’s relationship with his father.
‘Gordon Conway, the man I’ve taken on as my assistant, is perfectly capable of running the other shop and the warehouse, without me to oversee.’ She gripped the tortoiseshell handle of the bag on her knee until her knuckles turned white. ‘I thought about Manchester, but it’s a place I can’t identify with somehow.’ For a moment she closed her eyes and saw Jonathan’s ravaged face as he stood with her on the station platform. ‘No, not Manchester. London’s where I’ve set my sights. I’ve repaid the mortgage on the shop and the warehouse, so I’m free to start afresh. With real quality merchandise this time. I’ll have a different clientele down there, not a minority of women who appreciate high fashion. The bank will help out, I know, especially if I pledge a new shop as collateral. I’ll redeem any promissory note in no time, you’ll see.’
Peter whistled between his teeth. ‘All I wanted was a cuddly mummy,’ he grinned, ‘and what do I get? A tycoon wearing a hat with a spott
ed veil!’
As the car drew away from the kerb one part of Lisa’s mind concentrated on her driving; the other part dwelled on the note received that morning which was tucked into the zipped compartment of her leather handbag: ‘If you want me, ring this number. I implore you to ring this number… . Jonathan.’
She had opened the short letter, running her fingers round and round the figures. 2956. The telephone number of Grey’s the builders. Jonathan’s office number. Well, of course, his office number. How could it be otherwise? For a brief moment she had seen in her imagination her mother dialling that very same number, eyes dark and wide in the pale oval of her face, pleading with Jonathan’s father to see her, just once more. ‘We must talk,’ Delia had said. ‘I have to see you!’
And when Irene had come downstairs into the hall she had pushed the letter into her bag, feeling her face flame.
‘Are you all right, Mother?’ Peter asked.
His voice, gruff with concern, relaxed her hands on the wheel.
‘Perfectly all right, love,’ she said, then drove on, chin held high, dark wings of hair swinging forward on to her cheeks beneath the small, black velvet pill-box hat. Oh, yes, she was all right. She was a survivor. Now who had once said that of her? She was Lisa Logan, businesswoman in her own right, a Lancashire woman, and women from Lancashire did not live their lives pining for the unobtainable. No, by gum, Lancashire women co-operated with the inevitable.
And who had said that? Lisa had no idea, but it fitted.
‘You’ll see a great change in Millie,’ she said, as the car swung into the drive of the house with its curtains drawn against the cold winter morning.
Eleven
GORDON CONWAY LINGERED outside the smart boutique tucked away in a side street off London’s Upper Regent Street. He had made the train journey from the north many times in the five years since his employer had moved away, but he always lingered before stepping inside the shop, his trained eye taking in the simplicity of the window dressing. He never failed to look up at the letters engraved above the glass door: LISA LOGAN.