Always I'Ll Remember

by Bradshaw, Rita

  He stood behind the net curtains in the front room as the minutes ticked by, and when Lucy and Wilbert’s front door opened and they stepped out onto the pavement, he heaved a sigh of relief. Lucy never missed Mass on a Sunday evening but he’d been worried this one Sunday might be an exception, and it was essential they weren’t around. He knew they had fought tooth and nail to keep Nora off the drink as much as they could the last few years; they wouldn’t have appreciated him calling round with a bottle of the hard stuff.

  He waited another two minutes and then walked through the house to the backyard with the bottle of whisky in his hand. When he knocked on Wilbert’s back door he thought for a minute Nora wasn’t going to move her backside and come to see who it was, but eventually he heard her shambling footsteps and then the door was opened. ‘Hello, Nora.’ Her mouth fell open for a moment, showing the brown teeth in the receding gums. He hadn’t stared her in the face since the day of Audrey’s funeral and then he had thought she looked like an old, old woman. Now, with her hair unkempt and wearing a stained cardigan, she didn’t look as though she’d changed for a week, she looked worse.

  ‘They’re out so you can sling your hook.’

  She’d recovered quickly but that was Nora. ‘Aye, I thought they might be. That’s why I popped round with this.’ He held up the bottle which he’d been holding behind his back. ‘Fancy a glass or two?’

  ‘You’re asking me?’ The hard eyes narrowed. ‘What’s your game?’

  He had expected this and decided she wouldn’t accept he’d had a massive change of heart. His voice flat, he said, ‘I don’t want to drink alone and you’re better than no company at all. Jed’s out like he is most of the time now, ungrateful so an’ so. You bring ’em up and sacrifice your own life and what do you get? Sweet nowt, that’s what.’

  ‘Feelin’ sorry for yourself, are you? ’Bout time you got a shot of your own medicine.’

  He couldn’t appear too eager or she’d smell a rat. ‘Oh well, if that’s how you feel I’ll drink alone.’ He had seen the way her eyes had fastened greedily on the bottle in his hand.

  He made to turn and had actually stepped away from the door when she said, ‘No need to be like that,’ and as he watched, her tongue came out and licked her bottom lip. ‘Wilbert and her don’t keep any drink in the house. Mean as muck, the pair of ’em.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s been all that’s kept me going the last months.’ He wondered if she would believe the lie. She might be feeble in her body but her brain was as sharp as it had ever been, from what he could make out. The drink hadn’t made any difference there.

  It was clear she did believe it. He saw her glance back into the house and now her voice held a touch of conspiracy as she said, her gaze on the bottle, ‘They always come straight back after church so if you’re coming in you’d better get a move on.’

  He stepped into the kitchen. Then he forced a slightly uneasy note into his voice. ‘You say they don’t keep no drink in the house? Look, I don’t want to get on the wrong side of Wilbert. How about you come round to mine and we’ll have a drink there? They can’t object to that. A man’s allowed to have a drop in his own house. When they come back you can nip out and say you just had the one with me.’

  Nora looked at him. A leopard doesn’t change its spots, she thought, and asked herself the reason for this sudden visit. She had no illusions that any spark of feeling for her remained in Ivor unless it was dislike, and for him she felt resentment and deep bitterness. He had used her and then treated her worse than any dockside dolly, she told herself, and never so much as a word of remorse, but the bottle was full and a right good make. Quality stuff. And she hadn’t had a drop in weeks. Likely it was what he’d said, he didn’t want to drink alone, the big galoot. Weak as dishwater, he was, always had been. And to think she’d let him walk all over her. Still, she wouldn’t cut off her nose to spite her face. Decision made, she said, ‘I’ll come round for half an hour, no longer. Then I can be here for when they get back and no one’s the wiser.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Ivor kept his voice offhand as though he didn’t care much one way or the other. He turned and made his way back to his own house, and Nora followed.

  In the kitchen he watched as she looked about her before plonking herself down at the kitchen table and glancing at the two glasses. ‘Sure of yourself, weren’t you?’ she said, and then, ‘How many have you had before you came round to me?’

  ‘A few.’ Ivor picked up the glass with the whisky in it and swallowed it, before refilling both to the brim and passing one to her. ‘Funny after all that’s happened that we should be sitting here like this,’ he said quietly, switching on the wireless.

  Nora gulped at the whisky as though it was water, and when she put the glass down again it was empty. She smacked her lips. ‘Funny aftertaste, isn’t there?’ she said. ‘How long have you had it opened?’

  ‘Nowt wrong with it as far as I can tell.’ He picked the bottle up as though to examine the label. ‘Good stuff, this is, and that’s probably the trouble. You’re likely used to rubbish. Still, if you don’t want a refill . . .’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’ She pushed her glass towards him. She took another deep drink when he had filled the glass and then relaxed back in her chair with a sigh. ‘By, I needed that. Treat me like a bairn, them two next door, and her, she wouldn’t give you the drips off her nose.’

  ‘Lucy? I thought she seemed a nice enough lass.’

  ‘Well, you would, wouldn’t you? You’re a man. Oh, she knows how to turn on the charm all right but I live with her. She’s turned Wilbert against me and it was her who made the house dry. I know, I know. “It’s bad for you, Mam”.’ The mimicry was savage. ‘“Think of your liver”. Me liver. Who the hell cares about their liver when they get to our age, eh? You answer me that.’ Again the glass was emptied and when Ivor silently refilled it Nora did not object.

  ‘Never misses Mass of a Sunday,’ Nora went on, as though Lucy’s attendance at the church was a crime, ‘an’ Father Finlay thinks the sun shines out of her backside. Fooled him good and proper, she has. He’s not the man I thought he was.’

  Ivor let her talk and as he listened to the list of complaints and grudges he caught a glimpse of Lucy’s life over the last years. Poor little lass, he thought. She won’t mourn this one’s passing, that’s for sure. There were them who had a good word for no one and then there was Nora in a class apart. He must have been stark staring mad all those years ago but then he hadn’t been thinking with his head in those days. All his reasoning had come from a lower part of his anatomy altogether. If he agreed with Nora on one thing it was that all men were fools.

  When her speech became slurred the venom slowed down, and when Ivor got up and switched off the wireless, she lifted her head to stare at him out of bleary eyes. ‘Hey, I was listening to that.’ She tried to rise, presumably to turn the wireless on again, but fell back in her chair with a thud. ‘I always listen to the Palm Court Orchestra from the Grand on a Sunday.’

  Should he tell her she was dead? She was still breathing but that was the last music she would ever hear in this world and he doubted there’d be much melody where she was going. But as he stared at the woman who had cursed his life he found the need to have the final word had left him. He was taking her life and his own, he was going to have enough to answer to God for. He would let her die peaceably.

  The bottle was almost empty now and as he tipped the last of it into the two glasses, a few particles of white powder floated to the surface. He found he didn’t have the energy to lift the glass to his lips, however. Nora’s head was resting on her arms on the table now, and as she mumbled something about taking a little nap, he closed his own eyes. Who would have thought all those years ago when he first sported with her that it would come to this? he mused groggily. She had been beautiful then. A witch under the skin, but a beautiful one.

  And so at the end his final conscious thought was not of the wife he had lo
ved and adored, or even the children he imagined he was protecting, but of Nora.

  Chapter Thirty

  It was late on Monday evening when Jed arrived at the house in Yorkshire. Because she’d been expecting his visit Abby had made sure John and Henry were in bed and asleep early. When the knock came at the door, only she and Clara were still up, but within the first few moments Abby was disabused of the idea that Jed had come to say he and Clara couldn’t wed. Instead the young man broke down, blurting out in the hall that his father and their mother were dead.

  They helped Jed into the sitting room where, sobbing, he told them Ivor and Nora had taken their own lives with an overdose of barbiturates and whisky. They had left a note to the effect that life wasn’t worth living for either of them. This was now in the hands of the police but there was no doubt about what they had chosen to do. His da had never really got over his mam going, that was the thing, and Wilbert and Lucy were now blaming themselves, believing that because they had withheld the drink from Nora she had decided to end it along with her brother-in-law.

  Through the whirling maelstrom of Abby’s thoughts, one dominated. Her mother would never, never have killed herself. She knew this as sure as night follows day. While she helped Jed off with his coat and then fetched him a brandy she couldn’t think beyond this, but after a minute or two her mind accepted what Ivor had done. Even as she asked the right questions - who had found them? What exactly had the note said? Had the rest of the family been informed? - her mind was working on a different level entirely. Ivor was telling her as distinctly as though he was standing in front of her now that he believed he’d removed the threat to Clara and Jed getting married. He had doctored the whisky and somehow, probably through her mother’s enslavement to the alcohol, had persuaded her to drink with him. Rather than face telling his son the truth, Ivor had killed himself and taken her mother with him.

  ‘Both of them, Clara.’ Jed had managed to pull himself together but his voice was choked. ‘I can’t believe Mam and Da have gone within months of each other. I should have known how Da was feeling, I should have done something. ’

  ‘There was nothing you could do.’ Clara had her arms round him and her own face was wet. ‘He was a grown man, darling, and if he’d made up his mind he wanted to be with your mam, you couldn’t have stopped him. Sooner or later he would have found a way.’

  Dear God, dear God, help me. Abby was silently praying and she hadn’t done that in years. They still don’t know the truth. What do I do now? Do I have to tell them? She was the only one left who knew the truth besides James, and he’d never tell if she told him not to. The Bible said it was a sin but that was only if the people concerned knew, wasn’t it? The sin would be on her shoulders, not theirs, and she could live with that if it meant Clara being happy and Jed not losing the third person in his life who meant the world to him.

  But what about their bairns? Her stomach turned over. What if she kept quiet and a child was born who was handicapped in some way? It happened in these cases sometimes.

  But not always, the argument in her mind went on. Often the children of such unions were perfectly whole and healthy.

  But was it fair to let Jed go on thinking there was something he should have noticed which would have prevented his father’s death, or to let Wilbert and Lucy blame themselves for her mother’s demise?

  When Jed broke down once more and Clara turned to her for help with an anguished look on her face, Abby moved to kneel in front of the pair who were sitting closely together on the sofa. She didn’t know if she believed in Father Finlay’s Catholic God of her childhood and youth, but somehow she felt her prayers had been answered. Their union could affect both their own children and possibly those of their grandchildren, and she didn’t have the right to keep such knowledge from them, however much it might wound. She had to speak.

  ‘I have something to tell you both,’ she said quietly, her voice trembling a little. ‘And, Clara,’ she reached out and touched her sister’s hand for a moment, ‘try not to hate me because I kept it from you. I thought I was doing the right thing and never in a hundred years did I imagine you would fall in love with Jed, and he with you.’

  Both young faces were staring at her now and for a second she experienced the pain their separation was going to mean to each of them. She couldn’t do it, she couldn’t tell them. And then she heard herself saying, ‘It’s to do with your father, Jed, and our mother.’

  ‘You know something about why they did this?’ Jed asked shakily.

  She didn’t answer this directly, saying instead to Clara, ‘Some years ago Mam told me she’d had an affair with Ivor when Donald, Leonard and Bruce were little.’ And at Jed’s exclamation of disbelief, she added gently, ‘I asked him about it and he confirmed it was true. Our mother instigated it and she kept it going. I think he never really wanted her. He did love your mam, Jed, always.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not true.’ Jed had shot to his feet, his eyes blazing. ‘My da wouldn’t do that to my mam.’

  ‘I’m sorry. Truly I am, but it’s true.’

  ‘Why are you saying this now?’ Clara rose to her feet, holding on to Jed’s arm. ‘Even if it is true, how can you be so cruel when Uncle Ivor’s just died?’

  ‘Our da couldn’t father his own bairns, Clara.’

  ‘What?’ Clara stared at her and it was clear she didn’t understand. ‘What on earth are you on about? We’re here, you, me and Wilbert, aren’t we?’

  ‘Aye, we are, but not through Da.’

  Clara still couldn’t fathom what she meant but Jed’s strangled, ‘No,’ told Abby he understood only too well.

  Clara glanced from one to the other. She looked as perplexed as she sounded when she said to Jed, ‘What’s the ma—’ And then she clutched her throat, looking dazedly at Abby. ‘You don’t - you can’t mean . . .’

  ‘Ivor knew Mam would never keep quiet if she thought you and Jed had fallen in love, and I agree with him. She wouldn’t have. I think he decided to take her out of the equation for good.’

  ‘No, it’s not true. You’ve never liked Uncle Ivor and now to say this! It’s wicked. You’re wicked, as bad as Mam. Jed,’ Clara clutched hold of him again, ‘you don’t believe her, tell me you don’t believe her.’

  Abby looked levelly at her sister, pity and understanding in her gaze, before she said softly, ‘If I could have made it different I would have but I couldn’t keep it from you, not now.’

  Jed sat down, closing his eyes and easing himself further back into the sofa as he murmured, ‘I’m going mad. That’s the only answer to all of this. Things like this don’t happen to ordinary people like us.’ And then, his head falling into his hands, he said bitterly, ‘If they weren’t already dead I’d kill the pair of them, I swear it.’

  Clara flung herself onto him, crying uncontrollably. ‘You can’t believe it, Jed. You can’t. We’re cousins, just cousins.’ And when he didn’t answer her, merely continuing to sit as though he’d been turned to stone, she gasped, ‘I don’t care if it is true anyway. We think of ourselves as cousins and that’s all that matters. We can’t let anything part us.’

  Abby took herself out of the room at this point, her head bowed. She went straight to her bedroom where she sat on the edge of the bed, her knees and feet together and her hands clasped in her lap as though she was listening to a sermon in church. She hoped she’d done the right thing. She shut her eyes very tightly. Clara and Jed were suffering for something that had happened years and years ago, something that wasn’t their fault. But they were brother and sister. Something outside herself hammered the point home. And in the end it all boiled down to the fact that she simply didn’t have the right to keep it from them. Or from Wilbert, come to that. He’d have to be told now too.

  She rose to her feet and began to pace the room. What a mess, what a terrible muddle of a mess. She felt like Jed. If her mother and Ivor hadn’t already been dead she would have wanted to kill them. Even from the grave he
r mother’s power went on; she was still casting a shadow over their lives, perhaps more in death than she ever had done in life. Nevertheless Abby was glad she was dead. At this moment she did so hope there was a hell and that her mother was in it.

  She kept her thoughts in this vein for some time because what she couldn’t admit, even to herself, was the pain of thirty-four years of knowing that the one person who was supposed to love you best in all the world had always disliked her.

  Two hours later there was a knock on her bedroom door. Abby was in bed but far from asleep. Her heart was racing when she walked across the room, wondering if Clara was going to go for her again. But when she opened the door Clara lifted her head and said, ‘I’m sorry, Abby. I’m so, so sorry for what I said to you.’ Abby opened her arms and her sister fell against her chest, beginning to cry.

  ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’ But it wasn’t all right. It never could be because Clara and Jed would always be brother and sister.