It might be better to introduce herself now rather than standing back to wait for the two mothers to invent an occasion at which they might meet. Anyway, he appeared to have left home, so the chance of any prepared gathering sat somewhere between remote and impossible. ‘Here goes,’ she whispered before approaching him. ‘Frank Charleson?’ she asked. ‘Son of Mrs Norma Charleson?’ His eyes were indeed beautiful, a clear and unusual shade of green. The only slight imperfection was a small bump on his nose, which was forgivable.
‘Guilty, though I plead insanity,’ he said. ‘She drove me mad twice over and I’m only just out of treatment.’ He stretched out a hand, making the fingers tremble. ‘See that? Steady as a fractured rock. I am cured.’
She paused briefly. The man was endowed with humour. Used to males who trod the dried-out corridors of justice, she came across levity very seldom in the course of a working day. ‘I’m Elaine Lewis. My mother works for yours. She’s the housekeeper at Brookside.’
‘So you’re the lawyer?’
‘Guilty as charged, but totally sane for the moment.’ She didn’t feel sane; she felt dithery, wrong-footed and slightly alarmed. Control was slipping. Control was vital.
‘Never mind, we can’t all be blessed with lunacy. Yes, I know Mrs Lewis.’ He shook her hand. ‘I don’t want to be rude, but I have an appointment to discuss the buying of a property, so I must hurry before someone else snaps it up. It’s a bit of a gem.’
She took a card from a pocket. ‘There’s my work address. If you need any conveyancing, I’m your man.’
‘That’s a very pretty dress, sir,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘But my mother must not know my whereabouts.’
‘A lawyer is like a priest,’ she told him. ‘I guard clients’ secrets with my life. Good luck with the purchase.’ She walked away. He was looking at her; she could feel the heat of his eyes on her back. According to Mum, Frank was involved with a woman who ran a cafe on Scotland Road. Mum had met Polly Kennedy and seemed to admire her spirit. But Polly hated Mrs Charleson and had refused to talk to Mum, who was now rent collector for Charleson Holdings. In Elaine’s opinion, Frank could do better if he wanted to play.
She was taken to the crypt, where she was shown the law. F replaced S from beginning to end, and it dated back to when the suburb had been farmland. The house currently being sold had replaced a pair of farm labourers’ cottages that had been torn down long ago, so the law could be disputed. Yes, Frank might do a lot better, as long as he didn’t get serious.
After returning to the office, she sat for a while and begged her phone to ring. Not her type? Perhaps she should take a look at the competition; Polly was reputed to be pretty. Pretty Polly? That was parrot-speak. Oh no, here came Lanky Laithwaite. He hung round like a bad smell, and she was fed up with his persistence. Bob Laithwaite was a good-looking chap, six feet and four inches in height, and he kept asking her for a date. She was excellent at excuses and lies, so maybe she should aim for the bar and wear wig and gown with pride. This chap was definitely marriage material, but she wasn’t, not yet, anyway. She wanted to play for a while before accepting rings, ball and chain.
‘Doing anything over the weekend?’ he asked, the tone attempting and failing completely to be casual.
Bob was a full partner, and she was mad not to take him on. But he was as dry as the parchment in that crypt. He would keep for a while, she hoped. ‘Sleeping,’ she replied. ‘I have every intention of courting the rim of coma.’
‘Alone?’
Lord, that was near the bone for him; it was almost funny. ‘Yes, alone. I’ve been feeling rather run-down lately.’
‘Then let me take you out for a pick-me-up. You can’t possibly sleep from Friday night until Monday morning.’
‘Bob, I can do anything I like. There will be patches of wakefulness, I suppose, because one must eat and so forth.’
‘Can’t I be the so forth? I think I make a very suitable so forth. I have the height, the clean-cut looks, hand-sewn Italian shoes, all my own teeth, no tonsils or adenoids, and a very good car.’
Elaine found herself smiling. There was more to Lanky than had met eye or ear thus far. ‘No. Go away and solicit – that’s how we earn our crust, as you well know.’
‘I’m soliciting you.’
‘Yes, you are. Find something more interesting to do.’
‘I find you interesting.’
‘But not doable.’ That was very near the marrow, never mind the bone, she thought.
‘I shall persevere, Elaine. Take that as a warning. Shall I commit my intentions to paper?’
‘And I shall be looking for work elsewhere.’ She shouldn’t have said that to a partner in the company, even if he was a junior. But he was laughing at her, and his eyes twinkled when he laughed. Was she about to travel from famine to feast? Did she want a permanent male fixture in her life, or was she simply trying to offload her virginity? Whatever the case, she could not simply pause and collect two men in one day. Though she wasn’t sure that Frank had been collected . . .
Her telephone rang. ‘Who? Oh yes. Yes, of course. Put him through, please.’ She looked up at the man in front of her. ‘Hello, Frank. Really? So good of you to think of me . . .’ Bob’s eyes, so recently twinkling with glee, were suddenly cold and flat. ‘What? Oh, I knew you’d get it. Congratulations on that. Yes. All right, I shall pull out all the stops. See you in the Liver at eight, then.’ She replaced the receiver.
‘One rule for him and another for me, eh?’
‘Pardon? Oh, you mean Frank. No, no. My mother works for his, and he’s buying a business, needs the conveyancing done quickly. We’ve been friends for many years. He has a fiancée, I believe.’ Yes, she should be a barrister, since she was an excellent conveyor of decorative untruths. Bob’s face was alive again. ‘We’ll have lunch next week,’ she promised.
‘Lunch is business,’ Bob complained.
‘We are business,’ she reminded him. ‘We work together, so it mustn’t get complicated or messy.’
‘I don’t mind messy,’ he said. ‘Messy can be fun in the right company. We could make mud pies at the Mersey’s edge, go panning for gold in Wales, try potholing. There are many ways of getting dirty.’ He walked away.
Elaine stared at her blotter. She’d been a wonderfully good girl, such a dedicated student, no boyfriends, no sex, no university societies, few distractions. Her single aim in life had been to become a lawyer. Well, she’d made it, and it was time to pencil some fun time into the schedule.
Frank might be a pretty toy, but Bob, if she could coax him right out of his shell, was satisfactory husband material. Love? It was for idiots who walked starry-eyed up and down the aisle towards disaster in both directions. Marriage, managed properly, was a partnership, almost a business. Sex was for discreet recreation; sex with a husband was for procreation. And she disliked children intensely.
Frank Charleson loved brats. Newspapers had printed his plea for lawyers to specialize in their protection; perhaps she might find someone to help him with that. After all, he wasn’t marriage fare, so she wouldn’t end up as his brood mare. But she wanted him to be her first, and she was determined to continue to get what she wanted. She wondered briefly whether Bob ‘Lanky’ Laithwaite planned to have a family, since he was the type she intended to marry. Oh, never mind; that could go in the pending tray. Anyway, she might run to one child as long as someone else reared it.
Bob wandered back. It was clear that he had sod all to do. ‘Did I leave any briefs in here?’ he asked.
‘No. But I always keep a spare pair in my locker.’
‘Double cotton gusset?’ he asked, his tone deadly serious.
‘No. All right, then. Dinner. Time and place to be arranged. Go away.’
He sniffed, shrugged and swivelled.
She watched as he stalked off. Even his back seemed to be smiling. Bob was tall, educated, strong and rich. She would certainly marry someone like him. But first, she wanted exc
itement, variety, imagination.
Elaine Lewis knew she would be considered a cold fish by most. Everything came from the head rather than the heart, though there was one exception to that rule. She adored her mother. Nothing could ever happen to Christine, because Elaine was unable to accept the concept of a world without Mum.
But what Elaine could not know was that she owned an extra flaw, one she had not yet encountered, a major glitch deeply embedded well below her carefully constructed suit of armour. It was a weakness so profoundly rooted that she had not yet faced it, but it was about to come to the surface and overcome her to the point of no return.
She filled her out tray, emptied the in and left a few non-urgent items in pending. She would go home early, because Frank Charleson wasn’t pending; Frank Charleson was tonight.
Ida closed the shop for five minutes. She went out the back way, ran past the Kennedy yard and entered Hattie’s. With her spine against Hattie’s closed gate, she stopped to draw breath. Who would have thought it? And just as everything seemed to be going so well, too. Gleeful about her new knowledge, she had come to confide in her close friend.
She edged her way through the kitchen-cum-living area. Hattie was serving in the shop, so Ida was forced to wait. ‘I could be losing custom meself,’ she whispered. Hattie was having a conversation about which spuds were best for roasting, which to use for scouse, which for chips.
The shop bell tinkled and Hattie came through, visibly startled when she discovered that she was not alone. ‘Blood and guts, Ida, you frightened me halfway to death. It felt like I was having a heart attack. Who’s serving in your place while you’re here?’
‘Nobody. I’ve had me day’s big run on newspapers and ciggies. But I had to come, cos I seen somebody else, not just Greg.’
Hattie folded her arms. ‘You’ve clapped eyes on Lois at last, then?’
Ida blinked stupidly.
‘Polly knows she’s back,’ Hattie said.
‘Has she seen her? Has she been to the cafe?’
‘No idea. Lois has been back in Liverpool a while. I saw her round about the same time as you gave Greg a room and I told him to bugger off. They probably travelled north together.’
‘But you said nothing about Lois.’
‘I did. I told Polly and she told Cal. You thought I’d warned her about Greg, but I told her the lot. I believe Cal just carried on reading, wasn’t bothered, so that’s all right.’
‘But . . . but you didn’t tell me, did you?’
‘No, I didn’t. You keep as many secrets as I keep racehorses, Ida Pilkington. It’s like leaving a baby to be looked after by a shark. People will notice her hanging about, so they don’t need telling.’
Ida’s face was several interesting shades of red. ‘Oh,’ was all she achieved.
‘You know they all call you News of the World, don’t you? If they want people to know what’s going on, they tell you, because it saves them the trouble of putting folk in the picture. If they want people not to know something, they tell me or someone else who can be trusted.’
Ida sat down. ‘Am I really that bad, Hat?’
‘Well, yes, but you can’t help it. I mean, look at our lives, love. We live alone, work alone most of the time, and I get through by listening to the wireless, a bit of knitting, some reading and the odd night at the pictures. And I got legless on sherry not too long ago, so I’ve got me faults, queen. None of us is perfect, see? People don’t hate you. They just have to be careful what they let slip.’
For once, Ida couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
‘And it’s not just you, either. The washhouse has always been full of gossips. You can go in there with your sheets and towels, but when you come out you’ve a lot more than your washing to carry, because you know who’s pregnant, who’s dying, who’s had a hysterectomy, who’s carrying on behind their husband or wife’s back. Still, at least we’ve got one another, you and me.’
‘For how long, Hattie?’
‘That reminds me – there’ll be a meeting soon about the London trip.’
‘Are we going? To London, I mean?’
‘Oh yes. We are definitely going.’ She joined Ida at the table.
Ida spoke. ‘This is the only place we’ve known, isn’t it? From the Rotunda to town, Scotty has been our life. And they’re going to split us up.’
‘No they’re not.’ Hattie’s face was grim. ‘We’ll have a two-bedroom place and share like the sisters we’ve nearly been. The buggers won’t grind us down. We’ll lose a lot of people, but we won’t lose each other.’
‘We’ll lose our Polly, though.’
Hattie placed a hand on Ida’s. ‘She’ll go anyway. No way will that precious, lovable girl avoid marriage. And even if she goes up in the world, she’ll never forget you or me.’ The shop bell jangled. ‘Go back to your job while I serve whoever that is.’
Ida left through the backyard. She felt rather deflated and not a little embarrassed, because her news was not news. Other people’s lives were of interest to her, since she had so little of her own. But she could learn from this; it was never too late to learn. In future, she would keep her mouth buttoned. Well, she hoped she could . . . As she passed Polly’s, a shriek of mixed laughter reached her ears. The three of them were at it again. Polly and a nurse were helping Cal with exercises. ‘Let him walk,’ she prayed, ‘and give my Polly wings.’
Polly was literally rolling about on the floor. Sometimes, laughter was too painful to allow a person to remain upright for more than a few seconds. Linda, doing her utmost to maintain a professional and more dignified attitude, excused herself and went upstairs to the bathroom.
‘I told you I’d be the bloody cabaret,’ complained the victim on the borrowed hospital bed. His own bed was in storage at Hattie’s, since it had been slightly too low for his torturers. ‘It’s not funny. And I can’t help it. None of it’s on purpose, you know. See, if you hit my knee like that, my foot shoots up of its own accord. Reflexes. Linda says these odd reactions are proof that my reflexes are coming back.’
‘You kicked me.’
‘Yes.’ He grinned broadly. ‘And I kicked her as well, so it’s nothing personal. I mean, I wouldn’t kick her deliberately, would I?’
‘But you’d kick me?’ She scrambled to her feet and gave him the dirtiest of her extensive collection of looks. ‘You’re a swine, Cal Kennedy.’
‘Look, I’d kick you because that’s what sisters are for. I’ve had to stay ahead all our lives, what with you being twenty minutes older and bossy with it. Wait till I’m up and about under my own steam, lady. See how you like having your legs pulled out of the hip sockets. Black and blue, I am.’
‘Liar. There’s not a mark on you.’
‘But I feel the pain.’
‘So do I. This isn’t my idea of a hobby, you know. I’d sooner stick pins in myself than listen to you moaning while we try to get you better. Men are nesh. A woman gets a cold, but a man gets double pneumonia. We stick a plaster on a cut and carry on, but a man ends up with bandages and a sling.’
He closed his eyes. ‘Mam always said nesh, didn’t she? If we acted ill on purpose. Or if we moaned about being cold. ‘‘Yer nesh,’’ she used to shout.’
Polly sat on the bed and held his hand. Many seconds passed. ‘It was cruel, Cal. Both of them two years apart, bloody cancer. I miss them.’
‘So do I, Pol.’
‘Good job we were too old for the orphanage.’
Each tightened the grip on the other’s hand. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Strawberry Fields is supposed to be nice. They get ice cream and holidays in Blackpool.’
She laughed. ‘Freedom’s nicer, love. We’ve not been so bad together, have we? Except for your accident, of course.’
There were breaks in his voice when he answered. ‘I wouldn’t have wanted to live through it except for you, Miss Polly. You’ve been my hero, babe. And here, this place and all the people rooting for me, that’s h
elped a lot. But best of all, you’ve been a lighthouse on the rocks. The cafe, the cooking, feeling useful, getting adventurous with prawns and long-grain rice . . .’ He smiled, though his eyes were wet. ‘My salvation.’
‘You’re a born chef, Cal.’
‘I will be. When I get my legs back, it’s cookery school for me, our kid. Night classes to start with, and then, when they . . .’
‘I know. When we have to move, you can go to day college.’
On the stairs, Linda Higgins listened to them, smiling as she realized how deeply they loved each other. An only child, she had never experienced the power of sibling love or sibling rivalry, and she was starting to understand what she had missed.
Fortunately, she had good parents. Dad worked from home in order to be with his wife, who needed constant care. His clients understood that the mountain must come to Muhammad, so they brought their books to him. When Linda had a day off he visited businesses, but for the most part bookkeeping was done in his little office in a corner of the bungalow’s kitchen. So Linda was happy, though she was beginning to see what she had lacked.
Her love for Cal grew daily. They hadn’t said much about it, but it showed. Polly saw it. Polly always went missing after an exercise session, running upstairs to tidy the hair salon or popping next door to see Ida or Hattie. Ida, a famous gossip, had elected herself surrogate mother to the orphaned twins, while Hattie was Ida’s second string. Cal would walk, but Polly wouldn’t tell them yet, Linda thought. She wiped her eyes and re-entered the boxing ring. ‘Have you two done fighting?’ she asked.
‘Yes,’ they said together.
‘Just out of interest, who won?’
‘She did. She always does. I should have fought my way out in front of her. That twenty-minute gap gave her an unfair start, and I’ve been paying for it ever since. How I’ve suffered.’
A Mersey Mile Page 16