Laceys of Liverpool (42 page)

The events of the afternoon hadn’t made her love Micky more, she wasn’t suddenly counting her blessings, appreciating what she already had. On the contrary, she would much sooner not have glimpsed that other magical world. It made the one in which she lived seem drabber, even more colourless than it had been when she woke up. There were so many things she would never know, never do, sights she would never see if she lived to be a hundred.

She was gentle with the children when they came home. Nothing that happened would ever make her love them less. Lulu was the reason she’d been stuck with Micky, but that wasn’t Lulu’s fault but her own.

‘What’s the matter?’ Micky asked that night when they were watching telly – least he was watching. Orla was miles away.

‘Nothing.’

‘You’re very quiet. It’s not like you.’

‘Isn’t it?’ She looked at him and noticed his hair was receding slightly at the temples, that he had a small paunch. He also had a hole in his sock that needed mending. ‘Shall we go to bed early tonight?’

‘I wouldn’t say no.’ He grinned and, for a moment, she saw the teenager who’d charmed her all those years ago. Perhaps if she could lose herself in him, recapture the magic of those days . . .

They went upstairs. There was a time when they would have leapt naked into bed, but now Orla put on her nightdress, Micky his pyjamas. He went to put out the light, stopped and said in a voice she’d never heard before, ‘Who does this fuckin’ watch belong to, Orla? And what’s it doing beside our bed?’

Orla turned up in Amber Street late one Sunday night just as Alice was thinking about going to bed. Unusually for Orla, who was inclined to arrive in a flaming temper over something, she appeared pale and listless.

Alice sat her down and made her a cup of cocoa. ‘What’s wrong, luv?’ she asked sympathetically.

Orla didn’t look at her mother but stared at her shoes. ‘Mam, don’t get mad at me, but I’ve done something awful.’ There was a pause. ‘I’ve slept with someone and Micky found out.’

‘Jaysus, Orla!’ Alice’s sympathy vanished, to be
replaced with anger and alarm. ‘You stupid girl,’ she snapped. ‘Who was it?’

‘It doesn’t matter who it was, Mam.’

‘Then why are you here? What d’you expect me to do about it?’

‘Nothing, Mam,’ Orla said in a subdued voice. ‘I just wanted to tell someone, that’s all. Micky’s making me life hell.’

‘I’m not surprised. Most men would if they found their wife had been sleeping around.’ Alice frowned. ‘He’s not hit you, has he?’

‘No, Mam. He just won’t talk to me, that’s all.’

‘You can hardly blame him, luv.’ Alice thought what a perfect world it could be if only human beings, including herself, could bring themselves to behave sensibly. ‘When did this happen?’

‘Last Monday. Micky hasn’t spoken to me since. Not that I mind, to be frank, but there’s a terrible atmosphere at home. The children have noticed and it’s making them dead miserable.’

Alice remembered Sheila Reilly had been in Lacey’s the Saturday before last having her hair done for her son, Niall’s, wedding. She’d mentioned Orla was seeing Dominic, her eldest, before he went back to Spain. Alice immediately put two and two together. Micky Lavin was a nice, hard-working lad, but as dull as ditchwater and without an ounce of Dominic Reilly’s glamour. She didn’t approve of what her daughter had done, but could understand Orla being bowled over by a man so entirely different from her husband.

‘I should never have married Micky, Mam,’ Orla cried tragically. ‘I wish things had been different then, the way they are now. No one’s nagging our Cormac and Pol to get married.’

‘No one nagged
you
to get married,’ Alice reminded her.

‘No, but it wasn’t on in those days to have a baby out of wedlock. I felt obliged to marry Micky for Lulu’s sake. If I had me time over again, I wouldn’t go anywhere near an altar.’ She buried her face in her hands and began to cry. ‘I’m ever so unhappy, Mam. I have been for years. All those dreams I used to have are dead and I feel all dried up inside. I ache for something nice to happen, something interesting or unusual or enjoyable. I long to go out and have a good time or go on holiday abroad, somewhere like Spain. I wish we had a car so I could learn to drive, and I’d just drive and drive and drive till I came to the end of the rainbow. I wish – oh, Mam,’ she sobbed. ‘I wish all sorts of things.’

‘I know, luv.’ Alice patted her daughter’s knee. She was like a beautiful wild animal trapped inside a cage, the exact opposite of her mother who gave the slightest opportunity of excitement a wide berth. ‘I’ll buy you a car if you like. As long as Micky doesn’t mind.’ She knew she was being too generous, too indulgent. After all, Orla shouldn’t be rewarded for her bad behaviour. But a car would make things better for the whole family.

‘Oh,
would
you, Mam?’ There was something terribly pathetic about Orla’s excited reaction, as if Alice had opened the door of the cage a few enticing inches. ‘It would help with me job as a reporter. I could go further afield, not just stick to Bootle. And I could take the kids out weekends, to Southport and Chester and places. I’d take them on the train, except I can never afford the fares. As for Micky, I don’t give a fig if he minds or not.’

‘Sweetheart, I don’t want to make things worse between you two.’ She remembered Micky had adamantly refused to let her buy them a house and wasn’t
likely to take kindly to a car – he had more character than people gave him credit for.

‘Oh, you won’t, Mam. A car will make me happy and if I’m happy then so is Micky.’

Alice thought this an exaggeration. No doubt Orla had been happy making love with Dominic Reilly, but it hadn’t exactly sent her husband into paroxysms of delight. Her main concern, though, was her daughter, who’d arrived wan and pale, and now looked happy and excited, as if she’d just been handed a million pounds.

The air on Easter Saturday was as heady as wine: pure and sparkling, with that exceptional clarity only evident in spring. When the Nuptial Mass was over and the bride and groom posed for photographs in St James’s churchyard the sharp, fresh aroma of recently cut grass combined with the earthy smell of upturned soil, adding to the flavour of the day.

Lulu Lavin made an exceptionally pretty bride. There were appreciative murmurs from the waiting crowd when she stepped out of the grey limousine in her simple white voile frock with short sleeves and a drawstring neck. Calf-length, the hem hung in points, each decorated with a tiny rosebud. More rosebuds were threaded through her dark hair arranged earlier that morning in Grecian style by her Nana Lacey. Her shoes were white satin, flat, like a ballerina’s. She looked for all the world like a nymph, as did the bridesmaids, in the palest of green: her sister, Maisie, her cousin, Bonnie, and Ruth Mitchell, great-grandpa’s daughter, who was Lulu’s great-aunt, though three years her junior.

From across the churchyard Orla Lavin, fiercely proud, watched her daughter while the photographs were being taken. Lulu was about to escape the narrow, suffocating streets of Bootle. In two weeks’ time, after their honeymoon in Jersey – a present from Alice – Lulu and Gareth would live in his tiny one-bedroomed flat in
an unfashionable part of London and Gareth would continue with his ambition to make a living as an artist, though he hadn’t so far sold a single painting. The people who had seen his strange, incomprehensible pictures anticipated he never would. The couple had met on a demonstration in London that Lulu had gone to with her Aunt Fion.

Everyone, except Orla, considered it a most inauspicious start to married life: the husband not earning a bean and reliant on his eighteen-year-old wife to put food on the table.

But Orla had given her daughter every encouragement. ‘Go for it, girl,’ she whispered, more than once. ‘Even if things fail, you’ve given it a try. You’ve had your fling. You won’t spend your life thinking that you’ve wasted every minute, that there’s a million things out there to do and you haven’t done a single one.’

‘Things won’t fail, Mum,’ Lulu had assured her, clear-eyed and full of confidence. ‘I love Gareth and he loves me. I can’t wait for us to be together.’

And now it was done. Lulu was Mrs Gareth Jackson and would shortly be starting on a great adventure.

‘Can I have the parents of the bride and groom?’ the photographer shouted.

Micky nodded curtly at Orla and they posed for several photographs with the newly married couple; with the bridesmaids; with each other; and with Gareth’s widowed mother, Susan, a feisty, bizarrely dressed woman, something of an artist herself, according to Fion, with whom she’d immediately become friends.

Orla was making awkward conversation with Susan, hoping she hadn’t noticed the tension between the bride’s parents, when she saw the middle-aged, strikingly good-looking man lurking just round the corner of the church. He grinned when their eyes met, then stepped
back, out of sight. What one earth was he doing here? she wondered fearfully. How did he know about the wedding? How the hell was she going to get rid of him, not just from the church, but from out of her life?

‘I want a photie with Great-grandpa,’ Lulu announced.

‘Go on, luv.’ Bernadette pushed Danny forward. ‘It’s you she wants, not me,’ she insisted when Danny tried to pull her with him.

Bernadette watched the erect, silver-haired figure of her husband stand stiffly between the bride and groom. It was obvious he was making a determined effort to hold himself together and her heart filled with aching sadness. In the not too distant future she was going to lose him. He hadn’t told her what was wrong. She hadn’t asked. But for the last two months he’d eaten like a bird and hadn’t touched the ale he’d always been so fond of. In bed at night he held her tightly in his arms, as if worried he might never hold her that way again.

Alice came up. She nodded at the wedding group. ‘How is he?’

‘Not so good, Ally. He was sick again this morning. I thought he’d never stop vomiting.’

‘It still might not be too late for him to see a doctor.’ It had become a bone of contention between the women, whether Danny should, or should not, seek medical attention.

Bernadette shook her head firmly. ‘Danny’s the most intelligent man I’ve ever known. He knows where the doctor lives, but when it comes down to it, he’d sooner die in his own way, luv, quickly and as painlessly as possible, not have long-drawn-out treatment and operations. He’d hate me and the children to see him an invalid.’

‘Whatever you say, Bernie.’ Alice tried not to sound
cold. She had no more wish to lose Danny than did Bernadette and she longed to interfere. She felt an outsider in the relationship between her father and her best friend.

‘Your Cormac’s girlfriend looks very studious,’ Bernie remarked, changing the subject. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Vicky. She’s not a girlfriend, just a colleague from work. She’s the one he’s starting the business with.’ Alice’s gaze drifted from her son towards Pol and Maurice Lacey. Pol was expecting her third baby. Alice still found it shocking the way Pol had transferred her affections from Cormac to Maurice not long after baby Sharon was born, though Cormac had taken it incredibly well and there was a surprising lack of animosity between the cousins. Of course, the switch had caused no end of gossip at the time. It was hard for people of her age to get used to the way some young people behaved these days. Morals seemed to have gone out the window during the Sixties. In Alice’s opinion it had started with rock’n’roll, and men growing their hair long and wearing earrings.

‘As soon as they’ve finished the photographs I’ll show you the three Lacey salons,’ Cormac said to Vicky. ‘We’re lucky, starting off with an outlet, even though it’s only small.’

‘Have you discussed it with your mother yet?’ Vicky enquired. She was a serious young woman wearing an ill-fitting brown costume, flat shoes and round, hornrimmed glasses. Her dark, crisp hair was boyishly cut.

‘Alice was all for it. We’re an entrepreneurial family, Vic. My father had his own business. So does my cousin, Maurice. Mind you, his is just ticking over.’ At that moment a beaming Maurice didn’t appear concerned that he just managed to scrape a living from Lacey’s Tyres.

‘Why do you call your mother Alice?’

‘It’s just a habit I’ve got into,’ Cormac explained.

‘I’ve not long turned me house into a refuge for battered women,’ Fion was informing Susan Jackson, the bridgegroom’s mother. ‘Why don’t you come and take a look after the reception? You can stay the night if you like. It’s a big house and there’s plenty of room.’

‘Don’t the neighbours mind, about the refuge, that is?’ Susan asked.

‘Oh, yes. They’re forever complaining, to me and to the corpy. I just don’t take any notice.’

‘Good for you. I’d love to stay the night, save rushing home on a late train. And next time you’re in London you must stay with me.’

So many children, thought Maeve Adams as she watched them bent like birds searching for confetti, swinging on the railings, getting their new clothes dirty. The older children tried to look grown-up in the new gear bought specially for the wedding. By this time next year Orla could be a grandmother, yet her . . . She was thirty-five, getting on. But there were still so many things needed for the house – a bigger freezer for one – and she and Martin had always promised themselves they’d have a garage built on the side. And Martin didn’t like driving a car that was more than a few years old, worried it might be unreliable. And the kitchen was getting a bit old-fashioned – she’d like plain white units for a change – and while the workmen were there, they might as well have the floor retiled; terracotta would look nice.

But none of these things would be possible if she stopped work to have babies.

Martin came over and took her hand. ‘Penny for them, darling.’

‘I was watching the children,’ Maeve said wistfully. All
of a sudden the kitchen and a new freezer didn’t seem to matter.

‘We don’t need children when we’ve got each other.’

‘Don’t we?’

‘No, we jolly well don’t,’ Martin said. Perhaps he didn’t mean to sound so irritable. ‘I hope you’re not getting broody on me, Maeve. Our lifestyle would have to change drastically if we only had my salary to live on. We’d have to go without all sorts of things.’