A Mersey Mile (22 page)

He realized that she had an agenda, and he was on the list. For several seconds, he knew how a rodent felt in a cage with a motionless snake that would kill when hunger enlivened it. The warning
bell was clear, but her beauty was undeniable. ‘Thank you,’ was all he said.

She packed her bag. ‘You’ll be able to go back and play now.’

‘Not my favourite game, Elaine.’

She stood. ‘Do you have a favourite game?’

‘Doesn’t everyone?’

Each maintained eye contact with the other. But as Frank stared at her, he saw Polly’s face in the space between them. ‘Still, since dominoes is the only game in town, I’ll get
back to it. I’ll telephone you in a day or two.’ He returned to the protagonists’ table.

Outwardly unfazed and inwardly seething, Elaine Lewis left the scene. He desired her, but something or someone stood in the way. It was Polly Kennedy, who probably stank of bacon and black
pudding or perm lotion and peroxide. Sitting in the car, she gripped the steering wheel so hard that fingernails dug into her palms. What was the matter with her? She’d always been so
controlled and so . . . so indulged.

Oh yes, she’d wanted a certain doll, and she’d got it; she’d demanded riding lessons and a pony, clothes, makeup, perfume, private digs well away from her peers at university,
and somehow Mum had come up with the goods. Christine Lewis, left comfortably off because of her husband’s insurance, was by no means rich, yet her daughter had been spoilt.

‘I want him,’ she said to herself. Her body had responded automatically; even with a table between them, she had become aroused. This had never happened before, so was it as a result
of her decision to pencil in fun time? Oh, it was so annoying. For the first time in almost twenty-three years, she felt at a complete loss. Like a window shopper, she had picked out what she
wanted, though it wasn’t going to come to her easily.

There was another way. At university, she’d watched it work. A girl would come clean by going ‘dirty’, an adjective much bandied about in the union bar. A female would
proposition a boy and shrug if she got nowhere. Very rarely did that happen, since most men when offered sex without complications snapped it up. It was nothing to do with love; it was about
feeding a type of starvation that would not be appeased by food.

Could she do it? Was she capable of begging Frank Charleson to relieve her of her virginity? Apparently, men liked the idea of being the first, but this one was possibly suffering from the
disease named love, a chemical imbalance that occurred several times in the lives of most people. Suicides, murders and mental instability often resulted from the illness, as possessiveness and
jealousy lay at the core of it. ‘Never,’ she muttered as she pulled into traffic on Liverpool Road. ‘Love is for birds and idiots, not for intelligent women.’

‘You’re early,’ Christine commented when her daughter walked in.

‘There wasn’t much to do. Oh, and I can’t tell you any details about where he’s settling, because I promised, and anyway, it would be unprofessional. Although it
wasn’t discussed, I get the impression that his mother’s lost her place on his Christmas card list.’

‘She thinks so, too.’

‘Right. I’ll have a bath and get changed.’ Elaine started up the stairs.

‘Did you like him?’

Elaine paused halfway up the flight. ‘He’s all right. Played dominoes with some old men, bought me an orange juice. He’s very attractive.’

Christine slid back into the living room. There had been an edge to Elaine’s tone, a quality that expressed disappointment, almost dismay. The beautifully dressed young lawyer had reached
out for a plaything, and had failed to acquire it. Frank Charleson might not have had a university education, but he was a real man, a gentle person with ambition and charity occupying equal space
in his soul. She sat and looked again at the wedding photograph. Was Frank too good for Elaine? Was it possible that Christine’s perfectly polished daughter was substandard in some way?

There was something else, too, something Christine could almost smell beneath liberal applications of Chanel. No. She laughed at herself inwardly. It surely happened only to animals. Had Elaine
been a canine, she might have . . . No. But yes. It was as if Elaine had come into season at last. Oh, dear. Christine went to make a cup of tea. Sometimes, her thoughts were too ridiculous, too
fanciful.

Upstairs, Elaine was beginning the first of many difficult nights. In the past, she had seldom contemplated her level of sex drive. It had been the main concern of many colleagues at university,
but she had eliminated it from her life. She wanted a first with honours and a passport into law. Those who had been taken up by the social agenda and by finding a partner had emerged with lower
seconds, which might just open a door into teaching, and she was sure that they’d all lived to regret the neglect of books and essays.

Was she a late developer? Why were these feelings so intense? He was just a man with a shop to buy. Was she normal? Did other women experience such vivid and graphic imaginings? And he was in
every one of them. How had she expected the evening to end? In a hotel room between silk sheets, champagne on a bedside table, strawberries in a dish? Why him? Why not Bob Laithwaite? How could
she, a woman totally devoid of experience, judge Frank to be amazing and Bob to be ordinary?

‘Questions, questions, bloody questions,’ she said, beating her pillow with every word. There were no answers except for one. Elaine Lewis began to suspect that she was oversexed and
needful. She must find a way to get some relief. But it had to be Frank.

Earlier that same evening, Polly and Cal had experienced a different kind of discomfort.

They finished their meal and listened to the news on the Home Service before Polly went to wash dishes. She expected just two hair clients tonight, which was just as well, because she felt
tired. Helping her brother was hard, exhausting and worth every minute, as he was definitely on the mend.

Hattie and Ida were the pair on tonight’s agenda, and they were always good fun, though not intentionally. Between them, they came out with many inaccurate and hilarious statements, asked
several daft questions and provided Polly with a great deal of entertainment.

But they arrived early and via the rear yard.

‘We had to come,’ Hattie babbled. ‘I seen them and Ida seen them.’

Ida echoed. ‘She seen them and I seen them.’

Cal glared at the invaders. ‘I could have been having a bed bath.’

‘Well, you aren’t, so shut up,’ Hattie snapped. ‘They keep on walking past your front door. Everybody’s watching them. You have to face up to this, young Kennedy
clan.’

Polly dried her hands. She had no need to ask for the identity of the people at the front door. ‘Hattie’s right. Time we got this over and done with, Callum. We can’t have
these poor folk walking up and down Scotty making fools of themselves every night, can we?’

‘No, it’s a shame,’ he said. ‘Feel free to stay, ladies, seeing as I’m not having my bed bath at the moment. We could do with witnesses to stop me from strangling
somebody. Polly?’

Hattie and Ida stood open-mouthed while Polly helped Cal out of bed. With one arm round her shoulders and the other on a crutch, he hopped over to the sofa. ‘Well, that’s a nice
surprise,’ Ida cried. ‘We know you’ve worked hard, because we’ve heard you two and that young nurse screaming and laughing.’ She dried her eyes. ‘Will you walk
proper again, Cal?’

‘I hope so, Ida, though my left foot doesn’t seem to know what the right’s doing. Linda says nerves join up as and when they like, but there was a bit more damage to that leg.
Anyway, never mind me. Just stop crying and look tough. We don’t want Lois and Greg wearing our pavements out, do we? So they have to be frightened off, and your tears make us look soft. Come
on, now. We have to be hard. Dead hard.’

Ida wasn’t good at dead hard, but she did her best while Polly combed her own hair and applied a bit of powder and lipstick. ‘Do I look all right?’

‘You do,’ said Hattie. ‘Now, I’ll go out the back way and into my house. When I see them, I’ll knock on this wall. Then I’ll come back as if I’m getting
my hair done. But don’t worry about our hair, eh? Ida?’

‘No, don’t worry about our hair.’

They should have been on the halls, Polly thought. Ida and Hattie had no idea of how funny they were. Just lately, Ida had started to repeat almost everything Hattie said, because she was
determined to stop being a gossip. She’d have had less trouble teaching a goldfish to samba, but she was making an effort, bless her.

Hattie dashed out. Ida, Hattie’s shadow, was not uncomfortable in the Kennedy home, as she had looked after this pair of twins since their late teens. But she was nervous. Greg Johnson and
Lois Monk were unforgivable, and Ida was afraid of rows. She’d been a bit shaky since a direct hit on Bootle had taken out her sister, two nieces and a nephew and, though she loved a good
gossip session, she was seriously terrified by any kind of fighting; even a vigorous verbal exchange could upset her, though she was good at speaking her own mind when riled.

The knock on the wall arrived. Polly dashed through the cafe and flung open the door. ‘Get in here,’ she ordered. ‘Showing us up, pacing about like a pair of kids up to no
good.’ A foot tapped as she waited, arms akimbo, face creased into a frown. ‘Now,’ she snapped. ‘Come in unless you want to spend more weeks trailing round in circles like
Hansel and bloody Gretel.’ In truth, they currently imitated a pair of statues, though their sculptor deserved few congratulations.

They stepped in, and Polly bolted the door. ‘My brother’s through there, Lois. I think you may want to explain to him why you bolted without a word while he was trapped in hospital.
You wrote him off, didn’t you? Well, he’s on the mend and almost ready for a Cordon Bleu education. Do go in, dear.’ These last four words were delivered in Polly’s posh
voice.

When Lois had left the cafe, Polly took the bolts off the door and threw it wide once more. ‘Out,’ she told her ex-lover. Shocked, the man stood his ground uncertainly.

‘Listen, you,’ she continued. ‘Yellow-bellied, lily-livered no-good bundle of trash – shift yourself now before I remove your face. There’s no excuse for you. Your
mother wants a slap in the gob for bringing you into the world.’

He opened his mouth to speak.

‘Don’t you dare talk to me, Johnson. This is a time for listening, not for conversation. You said all you needed to say by getting the London bus. What if I became ill or crippled?
Would you put two hundred miles between us if I was run over and bedridden? So shut your gob and make yourself scarce. Come near here again, and you’ll be met by a posse.’ She pushed
him through the door and made it secure once more.

‘I love you, Polly,’ he shouted, his mouth against the opened letterbox. ‘I made a mistake. Everybody makes mistakes.’

She sat at a cafe table, her legs trembling, a headache threatening. Greg would get no second chance; even if she managed to forgive him, her heart belonged elsewhere. Was she as guilty as Lois
and Greg had been? She’d seen Frank off because of his mother, and that wasn’t fair, either. Yes, everybody made mistakes.

Lois emerged from the living room. ‘Your brother’s language hasn’t improved,’ she said. ‘And if you’d had one more old crone in there, you’d have had
the three witches.’

Polly pulled herself together and tutted. ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Lois. Was he rude? That’ll be because he’s improving daily and soon he’ll be enrolling at college to
become a chef.’ She shook her head in mock sadness. ‘He’s getting above himself, love. Oh, speaking of love, he’s fallen for one of his nurses who supervises the
physiotherapy department.’ She achieved a rather tight smile. ‘Actually, she’s just been made up to departmental boss, a sister. And she loves my brother and would never, ever
walk out on him.’

Lois blinked rapidly. ‘Where’s Greg?’

‘Outside. He’s been shouting through the door. Will you leave now, please? You two should stick together, because you’ve a lot in common. Take the top bolt off. I’ll sort
the door out when you’ve gone.’

When the cafe was secure, Polly returned to the sitting room where Cal was explaining about muscle development. He looked at his sister. ‘All right, our kid?’

She nodded. ‘Just tired and a bit of a headache coming on after putting the rubbish out.’

Ida rushed off to find aspirin and water.

Polly noticed that Cal’s face was rather pale and drawn.

‘Your brother was marvellous,’ Hattie said. ‘He asked where he’d seen her because her face looked familiar. Then he stood up and told her to— Well, he used a word
I’ve never said.’

Ida came in with Polly’s headache cure. ‘Here, queen. I got you two, cos you’ve had a hard time.’

‘Stress,’ Hattie said.

‘Stress.’ Ida handed over glass and tablets.

Cal joined in the charade. ‘It’ll be stress,’ he said, his tone wearing no particular expression.

It was in this moment that Polly knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that her twin was one hundred per cent back. Perhaps it was because he could stand, or it might be attributable to getting rid of
Lois forever. But it was likely to have something to do with Linda and real hope for the future. The little devil inside him had been revived. She swallowed her aspirin and thanked God.

As the weeks passed by, Brennan became a very credible Irish tramp. At the beginning, he wondered whether to acquire pencils and paper so that he could write DUMB DUE TO THROAT
SURGERY, but he didn’t need to bother. There were many Irish people in England, especially working on farms, so he simply blended in and adopted an accent nearer to Western Ireland than to
his home a few miles from the city of Dublin. His love for the land had never left him; he belonged here.

He even found occasional company of a kind, gypsies who fed him and listened to his prepared life story. An orphan, he had been raised by monks in various parts of Ireland, and he had stowed
away on a ferry years ago. He had no papers, not even a birth certificate, so he lived the itinerant life.