A Mersey Mile (21 page)

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 helped 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.’

Polly sniffed and stalked out to put the kettle on.

As she waited for it to boil, she thought about Mam and Dad. He’d gone first, the gentle giant who had worked damned hard all the days of his life. Mam had never picked up after the
bereavement, and she had given up her beautiful ghost two years later to breast cancer. The dreadful losses, with Mam’s death followed three years later by Cal’s accident, had welded
the twins together. When daydreaming, she imagined two houses side by side, Cal and wife in one, herself and . . . and Frank in the other. Or perhaps one big house for all of them.

Frank. She should have accepted him, because she loved him. And the silly bugger had gone missing.

Where was he? Mrs Lewis collected rents, while Frank seemed to have disappeared altogether. She missed him as badly as she might have missed a limb. He was the other part of her; he was her
completion. His mother wasn’t his fault. Oh, why wouldn’t he come and talk about things? ‘And why am I such a bloody fool?’ she whispered before carrying the tea tray
through.

They were holding hands again. Cal deserved Linda, and Linda was good enough to deserve him. Oh well, that was fifty per cent of the family sorted out – possibly. As for herself, she would
get by. Full-time hairdressing once again, onwards and upwards, except for Frank. No one else would be acceptable. As for Greg and Lois, well, they didn’t stand a cat in hell’s
chance.

‘Elaine, aren’t you going to be late for your meeting?’ Christine called up the stairs. Her daughter was taking rather a long time to prepare herself for an
evening business chat with a man who was not her type. The unmistakable scent of Chanel No. 5 drifted down to the ground floor, and Christine gasped when her little girl appeared at the top of the
flight. ‘You are certainly dressed to impress,’ she said.

‘For a couple of gins in the Liver? I don’t think so, Mum. This is a business suit, white blouse et cetera. So what’s different?’

‘The et cetera, dear daughter, being sky-high heels, that wonderful patent leather bag, your hair loose and flowing and half a pint of Chanel.’

‘It’s a briefcase containing legal pad and pens for notes. And my hair’s been scraped back all day, so I’m giving it a rest. The shoes make me feel confident and
you’re exaggerating about the perfume – quarter of a pint at most.’

‘You are beautiful.’

Elaine struck a pose, one hand behind her shining blonde hair. ‘And he does have lovely green eyes – you were quite right.’

Christine swallowed. She dreaded losing her girl. ‘Is romance in the air?’ she asked.

‘Flirtation, libation and pork scratchings, I imagine. He’s a fabulous piece of decor, no more than that. I shan’t be late.’ She kissed her mother and went out to the
car.

As she pulled away from her parking space, Elaine waved.

Christine watched, sighed and waved back. She loved her only child, but she knew Elaine very well, because they spent hours talking. There was something about the girl that worried her mother.
The clever, well-groomed and beautiful lawyer was almost cynical when it came to men; some were toys that could be thrown away or passed on to another owner once outgrown, while others, steadier
and wealthier, formed an assortment from which one might select a life partner because of his position and riches.

She closed the front door and went to sit in the cosy living room. Looking up at a wedding photograph, she smiled at Jim. There had been a deep, abiding love in the marriage, and Elaine was the
result, so why hadn’t she been born full of that love? Her childhood had been happy, she’d liked school, made friends, enjoyed the usual pyjama parties and birthday treats. She’d
taken riding lessons, had a pony for a while, and then . . . and then, university.

University had changed her radically. ‘The girls are prostitutes and the boys are clients, though I’m not sure about payment,’ she had announced. ‘I shall keep my head
down, do the work and get a first.’ Younger than the rest, she had sailed through her degree on a definite first-class ticket, before moving into law. ‘What’s she up to now,
Jim?’ Frank was attractive . . .

In the kitchen, Christine washed dishes and concentrated further on her daughter. She was probably still a virgin, but tonight, she was advertising herself. Frank was likely to be a toy, yet he
loved Polly Kennedy who, though very different from Elaine, was equally lovely in appearance and definitely the more approachable of the two. ‘Don’t make a mess of your life, Elaine.
And marry for love. You must marry for love.’

The Liver, a very old pub on the corner of South Road in Waterloo, was untypically quiet. At twenty minutes past eight, late but not indecorously so, Elaine Lewis strode in at
business pace. She expected him to be waiting at the bar, but he wasn’t. Frank Charleson was seated with three men of advanced age, and he was playing dominoes. He probably fitted in anywhere
and everywhere, she told herself before ordering a gin and tonic.

She knew he’d seen her, because her peripheral vision was excellent, and she never missed a trick. He’d raised his head, glanced at her, then carried on playing the game. Cool
customer, then. Well, two could play games, even if one lacked bits of wood with dots on. She took her drink to an empty table. ‘I’ve some work to catch up on,’ she called in his
direction. ‘I’ll be over here when you’re ready.’

She scribbled a draft letter to the lawyer on the selling side of the property threatened by that defunct law. The game of dominoes continued. After a further fifteen minutes, she looked at her
watch. Ah. She had been twenty minutes late, and he was preparing to leave his companions at precisely eight forty. So Frank had kept her waiting for exactly the same length of time. This was a
form of communication that went beyond a business relationship. He had noticed her, then.

He sat down. ‘You were late. I don’t do late.’

‘You do. You pay back by being as late as I was. Now, this property you’re buying, do get a full survey first.’ Businesslike was the way to go. Her hair drifted as if by
accident over a shoulder and tumbled onto the notes. He bought her another drink, but she asked for orange juice, as she was driving. A trip to the Ladies gave him the opportunity to see flawless
legs made more glamorous by high heels and black stockings.

She returned and carried on with business. The address of the property was noted, as was the solicitor representing the seller. There was a large shop downstairs, some storage to the rear, and a
three-bedroom flat above. ‘You’ll be living there?’

‘Yes. The business will be advertised as Aladdin’s Lamp or Aladdin’s Cave. I thought of Curios and Curios-er, but people might not get the Lewis Carroll allusion.’

‘And you’ll be dressing up as Aladdin?’

‘Only in private.’

She rewarded him by showing him perfect teeth behind a broad smile. ‘We all have our guilty secrets, I suppose.’

Frank studied her while she scribbled. Despite poise and panache, she failed to conceal the fact that she was available. Very much a man of the world, he had not been celibate since
Ellen’s death. Polly was still his indisputable future, he hoped, but until she saw sense, he remained available at a level that didn’t really matter.

Elaine stopped scribbling and looked up. There was a modicum of desire in those unusual eyes. ‘I’ll start the search tomorrow, make sure the property is clean in legal terms.’
She handed him another card. ‘That chap’s a good surveyor. If you need a structural engineer, he’ll let you know. We’ll keep this one out of my office so that I can give you
special rates. After all, we’re almost family, aren’t we?’