Liverpool Annie

by Maureen Lee

  Annie poured the tea and put Sylvia's on the bedside table. 'I only had your best interests at heart,' she said inadequately.

  'I'd sooner you didn't in future.'

  They drank the tea in silence, Sylvia still smouldering.

  'I suppose I'd better go,' said Annie.

  'It wouldn't be a bad idea. I'm harbouring the notion of throwing this cup at you once I've finished the tea. I might have thrown the lot, except it would have stained the carpet.'

  Annie took the tray into the kitchen and returned to the bedroom. She had one last try. 'Are you sure everything's all right, Syl?'

  'Everything is brilliant, Annie. I concede my social life is tedious compared to what it used to be, all the charity functions and dinner parties bore me shitless. I

  can't help recalling the fun we used to have at dances and the Cavern . . .'

  'The Cavern's closed.'

  'I know,' Sylvia said sharply, 'and The Beatles went to Buckingham Palace to collect their MBEs. The Mersey Sound is no more. Everything comes to an end eventually, including friendships.'

  'I'll be off then.' Annie shuffled her feet uncomfortably. 'If you ever need ... I mean, if there's ever any trouble, well, we've put Daniel in the spare bedroom, but there's an extra bed in Sara's room,'

  'Why, thank you, Annie.' Sylvia's voice was gracious and edged with steel. 'And don't forget either, that there's always room for you and the children when Lauri threatens to bore you all to death.'

  Annie gasped. 'That was a horrible thing to say!'

  'Not quite as horrible as suggesting Eric is a wife-beater.'

  'Tara, Sylvia.' Annie turned on her heel.

  'Goodbye, Annie.'

  Annie had opened the door, when Sylvia shouted, 'Don't call me, I'll call you.'

  She waited on the path outside for a good ten minutes, half expecting Sylvia to come hurtling out, crying, 'Come back, Annie. Come back. You were right all the time.'

  But she waited in vain. Her legs shook as she walked to the station. It was bad enough that a friendship of more than half a lifetime was over, but the thing v/as, she didn't believe a word Sylvia had said.

  A few weeks later, Sylvia sent a card and a pretty dress on her god-daughter's birthday. Annie thought hard before replying. She wasn't sure if the dress was a peace offering and Sylvia wanted to make up. In the end, she wrote a polite letter of thanks, adding, 'If you're ever

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  passing, do drop in. Sara often asks for Auntie Sylvia.' But Sylvia hadn't dropped in by Christmas, when more presents for the children arrived and an expensive card, signed just, 'Eric and Sylvia.'

  The same thing happened next Christmas. The following year, Daniel started playgroup, and later Sara started school. Annie felt her heart contract at the sight of her daughter in her gymslip and too-big blazer.

  Lauri, the most understanding husband in the world, took a rare day off on Sara's first day. He knew Annie would be upset, alone in the house for the first time in five years. 'Let's do something exciting,' he suggested. 'We have three hours before it's time to collect Daniel.'

  'Such as?' Annie couldn't think of anything exciting you could do for three hours on a Tuesday morning.

  Lauri put his hands on his hips and glanced thoughtfully around the room. 'I've been thinking, I'm fed up with pink walls. Let's buy some wallpaper! I fancy a geometric design, something ultra-fashionable that will drive the Cunninghams wild.'

  'What a good idea,' said Annie. At that particular moment, nothing seemed less exciting than picking wallpaper.

  Lauri went to get the car ready, and she glanced at the telephone. What she'd really like was a good laugh with Sylvia. It was two years to the day, to the minute, since she'd called and Sylvia said she felt a bit off-colour. She'd never told anyone, not even Lauri, how much she missed her friend.

  Impulsively, she picked up the phone and dialled the Churches' number. She could still remember it by heart. No-one had answered by the time Lauri came back. She put the receiver down, feeling guilty for some reason.

  'Who are you calling?' he asked.

  'It rang,' she lied, 'but when I picked it up there was no-one there.' She supposed that was partially true.

  They got in the car. Lauri was putting on weight. She was feeding him too well, he claimed when he couldn't fasten his trousers. 'I must adjust this seat one of these days.' He had trouble sliding behind the wheel. Annie leaned over and kissed him. 'What's that for?' he smiled.

  'Because I love you,' she said. 'I love you with all my heart.'

  Choosing wallpaper for the lounge was definitely not exciting, but the message, the reason, the meaning behind it, was. Loving someone, and that person loving you back, was the most exciting thing in the world.

  Mike Gallagher got married on New Year's Day, 1969, but his poor mam was driven to despair beforehand. Dot wasn't sure which was worst: a register office ceremony which meant the union wouldn't be recognised in the eyes of God; the fact the bride, Glenda, was a widow, five years older than the groom, with two teenaged children; or the outfits the couple had planned.

  'He's getting married in cowboy boots, Annie!' Dot fanned herself frantically with a newspaper. 'Cowboy boots and a leather jacket covered in fringes. I said, "At least you could get your hair cut, luv. You look like Diana Dors", but he told me, his own mother, to get stuffed.'

  Mike had a glorious head of ginger hair which fell on his shoulders in lovely little ringlets and waves. Annie thought it very attractive, particularly with his gold earrings. Most young men had long hair, but Mike's was particularly outstanding. 'Lots of the girls at the English Electric had a crush on your Mike,' she said.

  Dot patted her own hair self-consciously. It was more silver than ginger nowadays. 'Folks always said our Mike took after me. Mind you, I'm not sorry he's settling down. After all, he's nearly thirty-two. An unmarried man with earrings and hair like that might set tongues wagging, but not to that Glenda woman with two grown kids.'

  'I quite like her.' Glenda had been a widow for ten years. She was small and plain, but had a lovely warm smile that made her look quite beautiful and you quickly realised why Mike had fallen in love. Her children, Kathy and Paul, were a credit to her.

  'What are they going to live on, I'd like to know -fresh air?' Dot demanded aggressively, as if Annie could provide the answer. 'The kids are still at school, Glenda earns peanuts in that factory, and our Mike's job wasn't up to much, but at least there was a wage coming in.'

  For the second time, Mike had thrown in his job to tread into the unknown. Along with a member of his failed pop group, Ray Walters, he had started Michael Ray Engineering & Electrical Services, with the intention of repairing vintage cars from a rundown shed on Kirkby Trading Estate. 'Never,' Dot said, in a flutter, 'did I envisage having a son with headed notepaper.'

  She was in a worse flutter now. 'You should see Glenda's wedding dress. It's one of those mini things that hardly covers her arse. Oh,' she groaned tragically, 'I hope none of the neighbours come to that heathen register office. They'll think they're watching a circus, not a bloody wedding.'

  'Actually, Auntie Dot, I'm making myself a mini dress for the wedding.'

  'Where does it end?' Dot asked suspiciously.

  Annie touched halfway down her thigh. 'There.'

  'I hope it covers your suspenders.'

  'Oh, Dot, I'll be wearing tights, won't I?' Tights were probably the greatest invention known to man - to woman. It was great to be able to do away with suspender belts and not have big red indentations on your legs when you got undressed.

  'You'll never catch me in a pair of them tights,' Dot said, tight-lipped. 'I think they're disgusting.'

  Lauri thought the red mini dress looked very nice when it was finished and Annie twirled around for his approval. The children were in bed and it was okay to use the sewing machine. Daniel watched, fascinated, as the needle flashed up and down, and it wasn't safe to use it when he was around.

  'I'm not sh
owing too much leg, am I?' she asked anxiously.

  He regarded her thoughtfully. 'I reckon that's just enough. One inch higher and it would look indecent, an inch lower would be dowdy.'

  'Are you making fun of me?'

  'As if I would! I know hemlines are a very serious matter.'

  'You don't think me legs are too fat?' She was fishing for compliments and he knew it. He grinned. 'You've got perfect legs, Annie.'

  'You don't mind other men looking at them?'

  'As long as they just look, why should I mind?'

  Annie smiled with satisfaction. It was just the right answer. She looked in the mirror and said. 'I wouldn't mind having me hair cut very short.' She still wore it in the same style as she'd done all her life, which wasn't really a style at all.

  Lauri murmured, 'You know I prefer it long.'

  'It's my hair!' she pouted.

  He looked at her, amused. 'No-one's arguing over the ownership of your hair, love. It's just that you asked my

  opinion on your frock, so I thought you'd like it on your hair.'

  She threw herself onto his knee. 'Am I getting on your nerves?' Perhaps it was the frock, but at the moment, she felt more like a teenager than a woman of twenty-seven with two children.

  He stroked her cheek. 'I like it when you act like a little girl.'

  Annie fingered his moustache. 'Why don't you let it grow, Zapata style?' He'd already refused to grow his hair, saying he would look ridiculous at his age.

  'I like my moustache the way it is.'

  'Why is it I leave my hair long for you, but you won't grow your moustache for me?' She pretended to look hurt.

  'For the same reason we have flowered wallpaper instead of geometric which I preferred. The wallpaper wasn't important, my moustache is. If it's important that you have your hair short, Annie, then get it cut.'

  Lauri always talked the most astonishing common sense, which was probably one of the reasons they didn't have rows like the Cunninghams. In fact, they never rowed at all.

  She decided to leave her hair alone.

  Annie came hurrying home, having deposited Sara at school and Daniel at playgroup. Daniel was pleading to go five days a week instead of three. Perhaps next term . . .

  She worked out her programme for the morning. The beds were already made, the breakfast dishes washed. Friday was the day she cleaned the fridge and vacuumed upstairs. After that, she'd make some gingerbread men and prepare a boiled fruitcake. One of the neighbours might pop in for coffee. She hoped it wouldn't be someone who'd stay long, as she wanted

  to get on with Sara's dressing gown. Sara was shooting up; that blazer was unlikely to last till she was seven.

  It was March and appropriately windy. Old dried leaves whipped against her legs and skipped across the Close to become entangled in the tall hedge which bordered the Travers' front garden. The old couple were gradually being buried within a cultivated jungle of towering trees and shrubs. Later on, Mr Travers would emerge, remove the leaves and glare accusingly down the Close, Last autumn, he had swept up every single one of his leaves for his compost heap and resented those from less conscientious gardeners encroaching on his property.

  Inside, the house was beautifully warm, since they'd had central heating installed. Annie checked the boiler in the kitchen for no other reason than she liked seeing the pilot light flickering behind the glass door. Daniel was convinced a fairy lived inside who lit the flame each morning to cook her breakfast, and put it out when she went to bed.

  The fridge cleaned, Annie wiped the draining board with a sigh of satisfaction, and was about to take the vacuum cleaner upstairs when the doorbell rang.

  She tut-tutted to herself and straightened her pinny before opening the door. Sylvia, startling in a short white fluffy coat over a brief black frock and thigh-length patent leather boots, stood posing on the doorstep like a model in a magazine. She wore sunglasses and a big black floppy hat with a white feather. 'Hi, Annie,' she sang, as if it were only yesterday they'd last met, not two and a half years ago.

  'Come in,' Annie stammered.

  Sylvia sailed into the lounge and parked herself on the settee. Annie stood awkwardly in the doorway. 'Would you like a coffee?'

  'Please. No milk, no sugar,' she added, as if Annie didn't know.

  When Annie returned with two mugs of coffee, Sylvia had removed her hat and sunglasses and was staring around the room with interest. 'I see you've got new wallpaper,' she remarked.

  The wallpaper was misty pearly beige with a pattern of shadowy poppies. Annie still couldn't get over how different the room looked after plain pink walls for so many years. 'Lauri wanted something more regular, like squares or triangles, but I preferred flowers.'

  'I bet that was a serious topic of conversation in the Menin household for at least a month.'

  Annie plonked the mugs on the coffee table with such force that the liquid spurted out onto the varnished surface. 'Is that why you've come after all this time,' she snapped, 'to make nasty comments?'

  Sylvia looked unabashed. 'I just came to see how you were.'

  'I was fine until you arrived.'

  'How are Lauri and the children?' Sylvia took an embroidered hankie out of her pocket and wiped the coffee up.

  'Very well, ta.' Annie had been considering telling Sylvia to get lost, but felt slightly mollified by the gesture of concern for her coffee table. 'Sara loves school, and Daniel's settled in playgroup. They've both had mumps and German measles, but got over it all right. Lauri's put on a bit of weight, but otherwise he's fine. How's Eric?'

  'Eric!' Sylvia's blue eyes shone brilliantly. 'Eric's doing ever so well. He has cases on his own nowadays. People say that he'll turn out to be even more successful than his father.'

  'Good,' said Annie. 'And yourself?'

  Sylvia tossed her blonde head proudly. 'Tip-top.

  Never felt better, but I can see it's a waste of time asking how you are, Annie. You look very much the contented hausfrau with your pinny and new wallpaper.'

  'I think you'd better go,' said Annie.

  'But I haven't finished my coffee!' Sylvia raised her perfect eyebrows and pretended to look outraged.

  'Well, finish it, then go.'

  'If you insist.' Sylvia sighed and began to sip the coffee slowly.

  Annie ignored her own coffee. Her head was in a whirl. What had happened? Sylvia had been her greatest and closest friend. They had sworn to let nothing come between them. Perhaps it was she who'd pushed in the wedge by suggesting Eric . . . How would she have reacted if Sylvia had accused Lauri of doing something far worse than being merely boring?

  She opened her mouth to speak, to say she was sorry for what she'd said about Eric, and dammit, Sylvia, we're friends. We promised to be friends for ever. I've missed you more than I can say over the last few years. There's no-one I can talk to the way I talked to you. You're the only person I can tell really intimate things, like I'd love to go to bed with Warren Beatty. Remember when we used to disappear into the Ladies for a laugh because we were the only ones who found a situation funny when everyone else thought it deadly serious?

  Sylvia swallowed the coffee and reached for her hat and sunglasses. 'Thanks for the refreshments, Mrs Menin.'

  The moment was lost. They went into the hallway. Sylvia put her hand on the latch and gave Annie a dazzling smile. 'It's cheerio, then, or "tara" as you would say.'

  Annie nodded. 'Tara.'

  But she couldn't let Sylvia walk out of her life,

  because this time she knew it would be final. She took a step forward, 'Syl!'

  Sylvia didn't hear. She turned the latch, then suddenly her body seemed to crumple and she leant her forehead against the door and twisted her lovely face towards her friend. 'Jaysus, Annie,' she whispered, 'I'm so bloody miserable, I could easily die.'

  Eric hated her because she hadn't given him a child. He wouldn't mind if it was a girl, because girls can become lawyers and everybody knew it was the father who i
nfluenced the sex of their children. By now, the whole family hated her because she'd let them down. And the more they hated her, the more ridiculously she behaved because it was the only way she knew to fight back, otherwise she would become cowed.

  'I wear the most ludicrous outfits, Annie. Mrs Church winced when I turned up to Mass last Sunday in this hat. I get pissed and tell dirty jokes in a very loud voice at dinner parties and generally make a show of myself.' Sylvia gave a terse laugh. 'Actually, shocking people can be fun, but it only makes Eric hate me even more.'

  'Oh, Syl!' Annie said sadly.

  They had returned to the lounge and were sitting on the settee. Annie was holding her friend's hand. Sylvia hadn't cried, but her eyes were unnaturally bright, and there were tense lines around her jaw. Her grip on Annie's hand was so tight it hurt.

  'Have you seen a doctor about why you can't conceive?'

  'I've seen a specialist, no less, but he could find nothing wrong. He said I should relax, stop thinking about it all the time.' She gripped Annie's hand even harder. 'As if I could! Every time I start a period I feel physically sick.'

  'It might be Eric's fault,' Annie suggested.

  Sylvia pretented to look astonished. 'I hope you're not insinuating that a Church is not totally perfect!'

  'Sorry, I didn't realise it was a crime.'

  'Well, it is,' Sylvia said matter-of-factly. 'I once suggested that Eric see a doctor same as me. He was pouring tea out at the time and decided to pour it on my legs - it was the morning you came to see me. You didn't ask to see my legs, did you?' Sylvia released her hand. She got up and began to walk to and fro in front of the fireplace. 'You were right, Annie. Eric was responsible for the bruise on my arm. He doesn't hit me often and I give back as good as I get, but oh, God, if you knew how much I loathed you for guessing.' She glanced at Annie curiously. 'You never liked him, did you?'

  'I thought he looked cruel.'

  'The thing is, Annie, the terrible thing is, I love him.' She went over to the French windows and stared out. The fence between the Menins' and the Cunninghams' creaked in the wind and the willow tree shivered delicately. 'You'll never believe this, but Eric loves me back. He hates me and he loves me. Making love is heaven, but that's all that's left, making love. Everything else is shit.'