As he turned off taps and silenced the water heater, he felt a sudden chill. She was out there in the alley. How did he know? He left the bathroom and went into the kitchen where a jar of white-out stood prepared to cover the shop windows while he sorted through his wares and decorated some walls. Although the bathroom had patterned glass in its windows, he painted all of it. He didn’t want Elaine Lewis to stand and watch shadow theatre while he and Polly lived their life.
‘Frank?’
‘Yes, love?’
‘I’m making the bed.’
‘OK. The dragon’s asleep and the water’s lovely.’
They sat in brown Windsor soup giggling like a pair of children. ‘We’ll be no cleaner, Frank.’
‘OK. Get that old towel in the corner and wrap yourself in it while I play St George.’
She climbed out of the bath, covered herself in the ancient, striped thing, then ran to the door, where she stood and watched.
He pulled the plug, allowed dirty water to escape, blessed himself, then tackled the monster. It coughed, heaved, spat, and ignited with a bang. ‘You haven’t got a tattoo on your bum,’ he said while clean water flowed.
Polly tutted. ‘And he charged me three quid. Said it wouldn’t hurt. No wonder I felt nothing. It was supposed to be a heart with Frank written through it, so you’d know I love you from the heart of my bottom.’
He laughed. ‘Aren’t you a romantic little thing? Come on, let’s be having you, mucky minx. I’ll have the tap end near the dragon again.’
The second lot of water fared better than the first.
‘Are you superstitious?’ she asked.
‘No. Why?’
She shrugged. ‘Well, should we get rid of her present? Will it bring bad luck? Remember Mary Murgatroyd, used to live in Rachel Street? She was superstitious. Wouldn’t refuse to buy from a gypsy, never walked under a ladder, wouldn’t bury her husband on a Friday.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Mind, he didn’t die till the Saturday, so it was just as well. Her mother-in-law— Stop laughing, cos I’m dead serious here, Frank. Her ma-in-law gave her a statue with evil eyes that followed Mary wherever she walked. The family had no luck till she smashed it accidentally on purpose.’
‘Where is she now?’
‘Dead.’
‘That’s a shame. How did she die?’
‘Avoiding a ladder; she went under a bus.’
They were both reduced to exhausted laughter. It had been a long and difficult day, so they dried themselves off and went to bed. He ordered her never to have a tattoo, as he wanted her to live to be very old, and wrinkly tattoos were horrible. They talked about Cal, who had banned his sister for the whole night; Linda was staying with him. ‘I wonder if he’ll manage it?’ Polly said.
‘No, but she will.’
‘Ah. Will we?’
‘Oh, yes. I just have to . . . I want to put the bolts on in the shop.’
‘Why?’
‘People notice removal vans. Burglars and vagabonds are always on the lookout. I’ll be back, so keep my place warm.’
It wasn’t quite dark. He pulled on a robe before creeping down the stairs and into the shop. A white blind covered the glass in the door, and he saw her shape in the recess porch. She was ill, very ill, and he should feel sorry for her, but he couldn’t manage that, because he seemed to be her prime target. What did she want? This was obsession at its very worst, and he might well be in need of another lawyer in the near future. He heard a key in the lock.
Leaping forward, he shot home top and bottom bolts. The noise made her run, but he carried on as if he hadn’t noticed her, switching on lights and picking up a bundle of firewood for the flat.
‘What I want is a locksmith,’ he mouthed. She’d probably had the keys copied. No. She’d definitely had them copied. Why was she here? Had she wanted to spy, to listen while he made love to Polly? Was she considering arson or some other means of destroying what she couldn’t have? Was she going to hurt his girl?
He went through and bolted the back ground-floor door, deliberately re-entering the shop and moving round so that she might see him. She mustn’t know that he’d noticed her. Like a wild animal, she needed to feel free of hunters. How the hell would he get a lawyer to defeat a lawyer? And what crime had she committed?
When he returned to bed, his precious Polly was asleep. Never mind. She would still be here in the morning, wouldn’t she?
Ten
At last, Christine Lewis gained Polly’s confidence. After a particularly heavy second breakfast sitting, she was even invited to muck in with clearing up, and she didn’t mind. In truth, she was very happy to help with the drying of dishes while Polly sat and washed at Cal’s lowered sink. ‘It’s a hard job for you, Polly. But your brother’s a good cook, or so I’m told.’
Polly was happy to agree. ‘As soon as he’s on his feet properly, he’s going all cordon bleu, reckons he and Linda might travel to Paris for a course in continental cookery. Naturally, I’d have to warn the President about the invasion, because Linda and Cal together are an army. God help us all if they manage to get as far as Germany.’
‘And what about you and Frank?’
‘Oh, that’s dead exciting, Mrs Lewis. He’s got four antiquated Singer sewing machines, dolly tubs, possers, tin baths and wringers. He’s turning them into garden ornaments covered in climbers. He’s opening the backyard as a garden centre, says he has green fingers.’ She shrugged. ‘He hasn’t. They’re usually black from messing in compost and fertilizer. Still, somebody has to love the poor soul, I suppose.’
‘And that somebody’s you.’
Polly laughed. ‘I managed to whisk him away from your Elaine. She seemed very taken with Frank, but I’d already put my name down for him. We’re having a fridge, a washing machine and two children. In that order, I hope.’ She paused. ‘How is Elaine?’
‘Hard to say. She plays her cards very close to her chest.’
‘Then she should join Father Foley’s poker school, because it’s a riot. He couldn’t keep a straight face if you paid him, though my Frank has a very good poker expression, a bit blank. They all cheat. With Elaine being a lawyer, she might just manage to sort them out, injunctions and all that.’
When the dishes were done, they gave Cal his coffee and carried theirs through to the closed cafe. ‘Polly?’
‘Yes, Mrs Lewis?’
‘Call me Christine.’
‘All right, Christine.’
The visitor smiled. ‘Mrs Charleson’s changed a lot. She thinks before she speaks, and tries to be kind, and it’s because of her diet. All that sugar was poisoning her, you see. Diabetes makes people rather unpredictable until they get a grip on the diet.’
‘Right.’
‘She misses her son, Polly.’
Polly shrugged. ‘I can’t think why. She’s got you to do her running about for her, so why does she need him?’
‘Because she knows she’s done wrong.’
‘Well, I’m not upsetting him while he’s sorting out the shop. He’ll come round in his own time, but if Mrs Moo looks at me with the evil eye, she’ll get nowhere with him. Just give him some space. I know him well, and he won’t be pushed. My Frank’s a clever bloke.’ There was pride in her tone.
Christine smiled. Her daughter had probably found that to be true. ‘I’d better get on, Polly. Your rent book’s on the counter. Be happy. Er . . . did you say Mrs Moo?’
‘Sorry. I mean Mrs Charleson.’
The rent collector was still grinning. ‘That name suited her. It no longer does. Bye for now.’
‘Bye.’ Polly finished her coffee. She would leave Frank to find his own way back to his mother. If that was what he wanted, of course . . .
She’d been angry for days, first with Bob Laithwaite for accusing her of being imperfect because a slipped bra strap was showing through lace at the top of an arm, then with Frank for bringing Polly Kennedy to the bistro. That was to have
been her lunch, their private lunch, just the two of them. Was Frank Charleson afraid of being alone with her? Did he become disturbed in her presence, and was he afraid of finding himself incapable of resistance? It had to be something of that nature, because all full-blooded males found her exciting to the point where self-control became difficult. She was used to such occurrences, as she’d suffered unwanted attentions since her early teens until she’d learned how to kick a man or a boy in the male pride zone. As for being collected from home to be taken out to dinner by the junior partner – well, he had no chance, and she’d told him so.
Her fierce hatred for Bob had cooled slightly, though she still resented him because he’d managed to cut through her outer layer and discover a little of her inner core, the kernel she had hidden so well thus far. He wasn’t the first to achieve that; it had happened years ago at Oxford when . . . But she had vowed that it would never again occur. It had been a dark place, a terrifying time during which she had been unable to communicate her fears to anyone. She had no friends. Friends were not essential; she had discovered that fact in her late teens.
She remembered sitting in her little Oxford flat and telling herself that everything in the world was grains of sand and specks of carbon, that the world was dirty, needed cleaning— Scrubbing, painting, washing and wiping, never managing to accept that her accommodation was clean. She’d spent a mint on bleach, scouring pads, sugar soap, paint and polish.
Then there was the rocking. Unable to remain still, the upper half of her body had moved forward and back, forward and back, until she’d concentrated and made it stop. Her feet took over at that point, tapping on the floor, while her nails drummed on tabletops, and she had fought with herself for endless weeks in order to overcome and remove those outer expressions of inner torment. She’d beaten most of it, though she still found her nails to be disobedient occasionally.
She could not go back to that, to the crazy time. Counting. She remembered counting all kinds of articles from the correct number of cornflakes for breakfast to tiles on the roof of a house opposite her bed-sitting room. There were halves of tiles, thirds of tiles, broken tiles, slipping tiles. The building needed a new roof. She could not have lived in a place with a roof like that one, yet she felt unable to advise the occupants of the condition of their property.
Oh yes, and the clusters of roses on that dreadful wallpaper. She’d painted the walls white just to be rid of the flowers she had counted repeatedly. The room had needed three coats. Wet paper had bubbled, so she’d pricked the bulges with a fine pin in order to allow air and moisture to escape. She’d regretted the white, because it showed up the rest of the room until she’d painted that, too. A white box. She had lived for twenty-four hours a day in a sepulchre whited not on the outside of the building as in the Bible, but internally. So the process had begun again, and the walls became a pleasant shade of dove grey.
Even now, she sometimes studied digits on car number plates. If she found one or two whose numbers added up to thirteen, that was unlucky. The third made it a good day, but she had to stop counting at that point, or she would need to find another three thirteens. It was just a harmless habit, and she didn’t do it often any more.
She would sew a couple of anchor tapes into the turquoise dress to make sure straps never again slipped into view. Oh, and she needed some insoles for the shoes to make them a better fit. Plasters on heels always looked very Saturday night at some grab-a-granny dance in an ill-lit and seedy hall that reeked of urinals. Plasters were the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of a short drive into utter chaos. In a notebook whose place of residence was the glove compartment, she wrote reminders about anchor tapes and insoles. It was best to be on top of everything at all times.
Polly Kennedy was Elaine’s real opponent. Pretty enough in her cheap corner-shop frock, she couldn’t hold a candle to an educated woman in a nineteen-guinea dress of real silk and fine lace. The girl had looked as if she’d come from farming stock: pink cheeks, tanned arms, the wide, innocent eyes of the ingénue. Elaine hadn’t failed to see the ring, either, just a cheap aquamarine with a few diamond chippings stuck to its sides. It resembled a prize out of a low-priced Christmas cracker.
She was sure they’d had a bath together on the night Frank had taken possession of the property, since they were very much a couple; Polly needed to disappear from the scene so that Elaine might have a chance. If she just had a magic wand!
He’d painted over the patterned glass. Why? Did he have the ability to sense a watching presence in the alley below? As for the incident with the key, that had almost given her a heart attack. Had he known she was there? Did he think a few bolts would suffice? He didn’t realize what he’d taken on, did he? She was a lawyer, she was clever, she was beautiful, indomitable, a winner. And according to a certain chap in Oxford, she suffered from narcissism among other personality problems. Narcissistic? She was merely pragmatic, unafraid of the truth, accepting of her own physical self, even celebrating it.
‘But all the same, I’m not sure I’m normal,’ she said aloud. No one normal should be sitting in a car while the man she desired was a hundred yards away and in bed with another woman. Had the dimwit psych doctor been right after all? Did she have a fault the size of the San Andreas running through her? No, she’d been a gifted and industrious student, and she was now a talented lawyer. The facade must be made stronger so that no one else would catch a glimpse of traits that might be termed weaknesses. They were not weaknesses; they were merely the eccentricities of the kind displayed by many with great brains.
Mum didn’t know the full story to this day. The breakdown in Oxford had been kept from her; it was intensely personal and almost dehumanizing. Obsessive, the doctor had said. He’d visited her and remarked on the neatness of her temporary home. ‘Do you feel compelled to be organized and tidy?’ the man had asked after looking at a pristine kitchen, a well-scrubbed bathroom and her newly painted bed-sitting room. What was wrong with a place for everything and everything in its place? He’d noticed the three mirrors, too. Did she spend much time looking at her reflection? Stupid questions.
It was now almost two in the morning, and her mother would be wide awake and worrying. Her mother mattered, yet Frank Charleson loomed large in Elaine’s list of priorities. She needed him. These were hunger pains, though they were not in her stomach. It was lust and it was a new feeling.
Anyway, what was so bad about having things in rows? What was amiss when a person stacked older items at the front, newer at the back of kitchen cupboards? She was methodical, that was all. Clothes in the wardrobes were divided by colour, then subdivided by type and length. A second wardrobe held work clothes, suits at one end, blouses at the other. She had never in her adult life worked at a cluttered desk. Her tack at the stables had always been the best kept, her pony the best groomed. She was scrupulously clean and always well turned out, and there was nothing wrong with any of that.
Obsessive? Perhaps this business was a little extreme, hanging about just to be near someone who had rejected her. The difficulties in Oxford had started in the same way when a lecturer she admired greatly had downgraded one of her assignments to an A minus. She’d hauled him over the coals, he’d described her to her face as arrogant, and she’d finished up having psychological counselling. ‘Am I mad?’
Was she mad? Was she going to get worse with age? Or could she keep whatever it was under wraps and well out of view? She’d been judged to have a personality disorder, which term could, in her view, be applied to anything from ill temper to schizophrenia. Well, she heard no voices unless they were real and attached to humans. ‘Am I mad?’ she repeated. There was no one here to offer an answer, of course. ‘I think I’d better go home.’ She went home.
Brendan Hall, commonly known as Don, loved his little caravan. It was comfortable and it was his alone. Gladys Acton was good to him. She changed his sheets two or three times a week, made his meals and brought a mug of cocoa across at nine o’c
lock every night. Both needed to be early to bed. She was often up in the night seeing to her father’s ever-increasing needs, while Don was out and about before dawn, since he was now the main farmer. Local farmhands respected and trusted him, since there was very little he didn’t know about the land or husbandry.
He met the ailing father, even sitting with him on Sundays and reading to him from the works of Dickens, an author favoured by both men. Gladys Acton was immeasurably grateful, as was her father. Matt Mason had few new visitors. A nurse climbed the stairs daily, the doctor once a week, his daughter several times a day. The aged man’s intellect remained sound, and he loved the newcomer’s accent. ‘Thank you,’ he said each time a portion of Great Expectations had been read to him.
They discussed politics and religion, though for the most part they concentrated on farming. Don told Matt about potato blights in Ireland, the history of his country’s farmers, his continuing faith in crop rotation. ‘I come from an old-fashioned country and I remain an old-fashioned farmer. I worked the peat bogs, had a job in stables from the age of seven, learned to milk at the same age and got a kick on the leg for my trouble on the first day. Farm work seems to be born in the bone, even when the bone gets damaged by a cow.’
Matt agreed. Privately, he advised his daughter to keep hold of the new man. ‘He’ll work harder than your fellow ever did. He’s worth his weight in gold. Make sure you feed him well and give him a decent wage.’
Several times, Don carried the old man downstairs, wrapped him up well, placed him in the wheelchair and pushed him up and down the least rugged of the lanes. ‘Perhaps bees next year, Mr Mason, a few trays of bedding plants, some tomatoes . . . we’ll sell stuff from the gate on the road if your daughter agrees.’ He was happy. This was the life he should have chosen in his youth, but Mammy had been so proud to have a son in the seminary.
Gradually, Gladys began to trust the new man. She told him the truth. ‘My husband always had an eye for loose women, Don. He’s got at least two kids, and I’m infertile, so neither of them’s mine. There’s one in Beresford’s Green, another in Lowton, and he’s run off now with a thirty-year-old from Beresford’s Drift. It was a Beresford that owned the whole estate way back in the whenever, so that’s why we have the Drift, the Green, and the Ring – there are standing stones in the Ring, but not as big as Stonehenge.’
A Mersey Mile Page 23