All the Lonely People (4 page)

As Harry drank, questions about Liz's whereabouts swam around in his mind. Where had she been all day and would she be waiting for him at the flat when he got back in? The alcohol didn't help him to find any answers and in the end he banged the glass down and pushed through the mêlée round the bar out into the drizzling night.

The walk to Empire Dock took ten minutes. In the lobby, he ran into Brenda Rixton, the woman who lived next door. She had been chatting with the porter, but joined Harry as the lift arrived. Although he wasn't in the mood for casual conversation, there was no escaping it.

“Miserable evening, isn't it? And turning so cold, too!”

“Sure is, Brenda.”

“That's better! At last you've dropped that Mrs. Rixton nonsense. Neighbours ought to be on first name terms, don't you agree?”

Within the enclosed space, her perfume was overpowering. Harry hated lift travel and the lack of a sensible place to focus his eyes. Unwillingly, he looked straight at his companion. She was tall, almost his height, with fine blonde hair and a willowy figure encased within a pink sweater and matching slacks. Although she was in her forties, Harry reckoned, she had the inquisitive smile of a young girl who is anxious to know everything. Only the fine lines etched into the skin around her blue eyes hinted at age and a loss of innocence.

With gentle irony, she said, “I gather you've taken a lodger.”

Liz must have been amusing herself again. He forced a non-commital smile.

“I met her this evening when I got back from work,” said Brenda, adding, “I admire your taste. She's extremely attractive.”

They had arrived at the fourth floor. Stepping out, Harry found himself saying, “That's no lodger, Brenda, that's my wife.”

“Your wife? But I thought . . .”

“Yes, well, she has a strange sense of humour. We're separated, but she may be around for a couple of days till she sorts herself out.”

“I see,” said his neighbour, although her baffled expression made it clear that she did not.

They stopped at her front door. “Mustn't loiter,” said Harry with fake breeziness. “Plenty of paperwork to tackle, I'm afraid.”

She wagged her index finger. “All work and no play. It isn't good for you.”

He was already unlocking his own flat. “Goodnight, Brenda.”

Tonight no Liz awaited him. Her return must have been brief. He could detect no signs that she had eaten here, but in the bedroom he almost fell over a couple of heavily strapped suitcases left behind the door into the hall. There was a carrier bag full of cosmetics and odds and ends of clothing bought from George Henry Lee's. So she planned to use the flat as a hotel for one more night at least. But where was she now? He changed into a sweater and jeans and flicked the television on. A choice of a repeated sitcom or snooker, a chat show or a documentary on AIDS. He groaned and went to examine the contents of his fridge freezer.

As he was lighting the gas on the cooker he caught sight of half a sheet of paper resting against the coffee pot. A note from Liz. Scrawled in her flowing hand, it said:
Missed you
again! I'll be at the Ferry Club by eleven. Come over why don't you?

Her easy assumption that he would come running after her angered him. During their time apart, he had found it easy to forget that the centre of Liz's universe was herself. Screwing up the piece of paper, he fed it vengefully to the gas flame. But he didn't bother to deceive himself. When Liz called, he had always followed. Sometimes he was afraid he always would.

Chapter Four

The Ferry Club was hidden at the heart of a maze of side streets behind Lime Street Station. Harry walked past empty burger bars and curtained Chinese restaurants, shuttered shops and barricaded redevelopment sites whose walls were covered with fly-posters advertising a political rally at the Pierhead. As the minutes ticked away towards eleven, Liverpool was quiet. Even the Ferry looked almost discreet as he approached. No neon lights, just a notice confirming that Reginald Anthony Gallimore was licensed pursuant to Act of Parliament for singing, dancing and the sale of intoxicating liquor, plus a yellow placard pinned to the door which said that Angie O'Hare, Hit Recording Artist, and Russ Jericho, Popular Comedian, were starring tonight.

At the entrance, a drunken tramp was about to pick an argument with a couple of bouncers, mean and muscular in their ill-fitting dinner suits. Their sniggers suggested they were hoping that he would provoke them into violence. A sign by the pay desk said MEMBERS AND BONA FIDE GUESTS ONLY - BY ORDER, but when Harry handed over his money he was allowed straight through with no questions asked.

The interior of the club was a raucous contrast to the desert calm of the city streets. The queue at the bar was three deep and dozens more people sat at tables grouped in a semi-circle facing the stage. Drinking, talking, a few even listening to the Popular Comedian, a flabby elephant of a man who was tossing old mother-in-law gags out of the side of his mouth in a treacle-thick Scouse accent.

“Y'know, I'm not saying she's ugly,” Harry heard him mutter, “but I've seen better faces on clocks. And the size of her! Bleeding hell, she could eat a banana sideways. Y'know, I reckon she could sing a duet on her own.”

Now and then members of the audience got up and walked straight in front of the act to the bar, but no one seemed to care, least of all Russ Jericho. It gave him the chance to paper over the cracks in his act. When a fat girl in a mini-dress plodded by he interrupted a racist joke about a bald Pakistani to say, “Last time I saw an arse like that, it was being whipped by Lester Piggott.”

Harry's gaze travelled around the room. Glittery pillars supported a plasterboard ceiling on which pin-point lights flickered in rotation, red, green and blue. Two overhead fans whirled in a doomed attempt to dispel the fug of cigarette smoke and cheap scent. Young girls chatted to each other, feigning not to stare at the leather-jacketed lads sinking pints in silence near the door. Within easy reach of the bar, painted women in short black skirts and fish-net tights watched out for men who might pay for the pleasure of their company.

Liz was nowhere to be seen. Harry stifled a grunt of irritation and looked at his watch. Five past eleven. Perhaps she would be along in a minute. He decided to buy a drink and as he waited for service he reflected that the Ferry hadn't changed much since his last visit with her. They must have been married eighteen months then and he had already discovered the fascination which clubland held for her; as with so much else, he didn't share her point of view. The place had probably not been cleaned in the meantime, but in the dim lighting you couldn't tell.

Harry's turn at the bar coincided with a scabrous punchline about a lunatic and a lesbian. Harry ordered a pint of Ruddles from a barmaid with dyed blonde hair that was dirty brown at the roots. Large spiky hoops hung from her ears like offensive weapons. Her blouse was cut low, her fingers were heavy with rings. As she took Harry's money, she stared over his shoulder.

“Froggy, at last! Where were you?”

A small man jostled past Harry, catching his elbow and causing him to spill some of the beer that the blonde had poured a moment before. Without a sideways glance or an apology, the newcomer said in squeaky indignation, “Had things to see to, didn't I?”

“The boss was chasing after you. As soon as he turned up, her ladyship threw a fit. God knows why, he wasn't back as late as he said he would be. Anyway, you should have been here at half nine, so if he's searching for someone to kick, you're favourite.”

The man had protruding eyes and a forehead wrinkled as if with the effort of years spent making up excuses. It was a petty rogue's face, of the sort Harry encountered every day of his working life. Standing by his shoulder, Harry caught a whiff of a foul smell, distinctive even in the Ferry's murky atmosphere.

After a pause for thought the man said, “Anyone asks, Myra's been took sick. They've rushed her into hospital and I'm only just back from the Royal. Okay, Shirelle?”

The barmaid shrugged. A bulging eye twinkled at her as a new line of self-defence evidently occurred to the man. “And I'll keep me mouth shut about yer job at the Apollo. Promise.”

Shirelle tossed her blond mane in contempt. The earrings jangled with menace, but she spoke resignedly. “All right, I'll cover for you. Now sod off.”

The small man blew her a kiss and shoved back through the crowd, vanishing from view. Liz still had not turned up. Harry spotted a trio of young girls slinking through the double doors at the other side of the concert hall. Off to the disco. Liz loved to dance and it occurred to him that she might be jiving the night away. He followed the girls downstairs. On the dance floor half a dozen women were swaying to the beat thudding from head-high speakers in each corner of the room. The dancers gazed into space, while the strobes painted them in ever-changing colours. Liz was not amongst them. Harry took a long draught from his glass and went back upstairs, in time to hear Russ Jericho wind up his act with a mumbled platitude about a terrific audience. The applause was patchy and Harry didn't join in.

A compère in a black velvet suit with flecks of dandruff sprinkled like snowflakes around the shoulders strutted on to the stage. As he gabbled about the quality of the entertainment, more people gravitated towards the bar. Harry scanned their faces in the hope of seeing Liz. No luck.

He turned to the man standing next to him, a stocky figure sales-rep smart in jacket and tie, and said, “I'm looking for a woman. Tall, dark, she . . . ”

The man interrupted him with an ironic wink. “Aren't we all, pal, aren't we all?”

Harry finished his drink in silence. Where was she? The old frustration at her thoughtlessness began to burn within him: had she stood him up? For all he knew, she might be at the Demi-Monde or Huskisson's with some new bloke she'd just picked up. Of course, he should blame himself for succumbing to the temptation of her note like an addict craving for another fix.

“Well, that's enough from me,” said the compère and a slurred voice from the audience bellowed assent. “Now is the moment you've all been waiting for. The highlight of our show, our very own hit recording artiste.” He rolled off the last word with a Gallic flourish before rising to a new crescendo: “Yes, ladies and gentlemen. The enchanting. The talented. The lovely. The one and only - Miss Angie O'Hare!”

The keyboard player and drummer in the background burst into life with a Lennon and McCartney number. The people at the tables started clapping and someone cheered. A woman swept on to the stage, microphone in hand, singing about all the lonely people.

For Harry, her sound belonged to the distant past and the pop music of his youth when once or twice she had made it to the lower reaches of the record charts. Sixties ballads had always appealed to him and he still had an Angie O'Hare album somewhere at home. The song brought Brenda Rixton back to mind. Lack of companionship must cause her to contrive their regular meetings in the corridor or lift at Empire Dock. Where the lonely people all come from, he thought, matters less than where they find to go. And, suddenly, he felt Liz's failure to turn up as keenly as a nettle sting.

Angie O'Hare took a bow and as her head rose again, for a second he fancied that he saw a glimpse of sadness in her sapphire eyes, as though she too identified with the lyric. But within moments he realised that he must have been mistaken, for a smile of triumph spread across her face as she said, “Thank you all so very much,” and started talking about the next number that she was going to sing. Feeling cheated, Harry reached for a cigarette and looked away once more.

The drinkers' queue had thinned and he traced a path towards the serving blonde. She was lying to a tall, tanned man in a slickly tailored dinner jacket whom Harry took to be the manager.

“Froggy? He only arrived half an hour ago, poor lamb. His wife's sick and they've whipped her into the Royal. He shouldn't really have come at all, but he didn't want to let you down.”

“Do me a favour.” The man tugged at the ends of his dark moustache. His mind seemed to be elsewhere, but you could tell from the gesture that he thought himself handsome. Even the barmaid, concentrating on her trivial deceit, let her eyes linger on her boss a little longer than necessary before she spoke again.

“Honest,” she insisted, “you only have to ask him. But mind what you say, he's been under a lot of pressure lately.”

Worthy of an Oscar, Harry thought. He coughed and shuffled, drawing attention to the fiver in his hand. Ignoring him, the manager said, “He'll be under more pressure if I find that he's been spinning me a yarn.” But he turned away as he spoke.

After being served, Harry stayed by the counter, sipping the beer and telling himself that Liz would not be coming now. Why she had bothered to summon him here was anyone's guess. It would have made more sense to listen to Jim's advice and steer clear, but where Liz was concerned, logic was as scarce as love in a brothel. Today had been reminiscent of their marriage as a whole, as he twitched at the end of whatever strings she cared to pull.

From the stage, Angie O'Hare was crooning the chorus of
Don't Make Me Over.
He looked around the concert room. Everywhere, men and women were pairing off, like chess players easing through a well-tried opening game. Through the crowd, he could see the man called Froggy deep in conversation with a customer who had his back to Harry. Spinning another tall story, no doubt. But then the customer's girlfriend, a sulky blonde with a tart's wiggle, interrupted them and drew her man aside. Froggy resumed his desultory collection of disused glasses, casting a surreptitious glance at the manager as he did so. Harry saw the little man relax visibly as he spotted his boss at the rear of the room, standing with arms folded, looking abstractedly towards the stage.

Angie was in full flow: no matter how many times she had wrapped herself around the lyric, she still managed to give it everything. Harry could vaguely remember fancying her when she was in her prime. Women had been a mystery to him then. Come to that, they still were. But tonight, in a shimmering silk dress slashed from the waist and with her auburn hair fashionably frizzed, she looked as good as ever. There was a strength there, a sense of power, that he found as attractive as the curves of her body. Unexpectedly, he experienced his first stirrings of desire for her that he could recall since long-ago schooldays and when the number spiralled to its climax, he found himself applauding with the rest of the Ferry crowd.

Breathing hard, she inclined her head in acknowledgment, and this time Harry could detect no hint of anguish in her eyes. Softly, she said, “Tonight is very special for me, so I'd like to dedicate this next song to the man in my life.” She sent a secret smile into the sea of faces. “I sang it to him on the night we met. It means so much to me - and, I hope, to you.”

Absurdly, it was as if for Harry the words had broken a momentary spell when Liz was forgotten and for an instant the singer was in tune with him. The keyboard player struck up with the opening chords of
The Look of Love
and Harry started to edge towards the door. Liz would not be seen in the Ferry Club tonight.

On the way out he felt a hand brush against his leg. He glanced round and found himself looking at the grinning face of a woman in an unflattering tight red frock. She might have been any age between twenty and forty. Her freckled face was as used as an old bus ticket and somehow familiar.

“Looking for company, darling?”

Harry paused, trying in vain to place her in his memory. At the sight of his hesitation, she said, “No need to be shy. Mine's a vodka and lime. Or - we could take a walk if you like. I'm not too fussed about her voice, are you?”

Bony fingers dug into his arm. Decisively, he shook his head and said with a rueful grin, “Sorry, love. Not tonight.” Or any night, please God.

“You don't remember me, do you? I'm Trisha. Peanuts Benjamin is my friend.”

Of course. He had defended her on a soliciting charge eighteen months ago. Result: a fine, paid off no doubt by her going straight back on the streets again. As far as he could recall, she had still been in her teens at that time, but women aged rapidly in Trisha's business. He said hello and asked how she was.

“All right. You know. I'm having a night off, as a matter of fact. Peanuts had to sort out some bother at the Ludo Club. Pity, we was going to celebrate him getting off. In court, I mean. You did a good job, he's really made up.”

“I'll get you that vodka and lime.”

“Don't bother, I was only messing. Anyway, I'm sick of this place. Might as well catch a taxi and go back.”

They went outside together. One of the men on the door treated Harry to a knowing smirk. Trisha stuck her tongue out at the bouncers and put her arm in Harry's, a gesture of camaraderie rather than a come-on. For him, it was a relief to get back into the open air.

As they walked down the road, looking for a cab she said, “So what are you doing in the Ferry? It's not where you expect to find posh solicitors, a dive like that.”

“Long story,” he said. “Would you believe I was just looking for my wife?”

“Oh yeah?” She giggled in incredulous merriment. “And I'm an Avon lady. Never mind, you didn't meet anyone this evening, but there's always tomorrow.”