Lime Street Blues (41 page)

‘We’ll just have to see, Mum.’

The voice got slower, became slurred. The ambulance came. Jeannie waited until Alex had left Magnolia Cottage for ever and the doctor had popped his head round the door to say he was going, before helping her mother upstairs into the bed where she’d lain with Alex for fifteen years, the best years. She sat with her until certain that the whisky and the tablet had done their work and Rose was fast asleep.

Downstairs, she made tea, and it wasn’t until then that her own tears fell. She wept for Alex, now lying in a cold mortuary somewhere, for her mother and the fatherless girls. Marcia had been right, after all, but it had never
crossed her mind that the cruel finger of fate would point at Alex and not Tom.

Lachlan returned. ‘Mum’s dead upset. She really liked Alex, but then everybody did. She’s only too pleased to help by having the girls. Oh, and it’s stopped raining at last.’

Jeannie threw herself into his arms and sobbed her heart out. They sat holding each other, until Jeannie’s sobs subsided and she remembered Chloe had only had half her feed. ‘I’d better go home,’ she said. ‘Or should you go and fetch her and I’ll feed her here? Oh, I don’t know what to do! I don’t want her waking Mum up.’

‘Chloe’s OK,’ Lachlan soothed. ‘I rang Fly from Mum’s. He made her a bottle. She’s fast asleep. I gave him this number in case there’s an emergency.’

They spent the rest of the night talking, sleeping occasionally, drinking tea, until a glimmer of light began to show through the curtains and the birds began to sing, heralding the arrival of a brilliantly sunny April day.

Alex was buried in the blue velvet suit he’d worn when he’d married Rose Flowers. Rose wore her matching blue wedding dress to the funeral. ‘It’s what he would have wanted,’ she said. ‘If he’s up in heaven watching, he’ll be pleased.’ She was bearing up remarkably well, mainly due to Ida Bailey, who’d been a tower of strength. It wasn’t all that long since she’d lost her own husband, and she knew exactly how Rose felt and which words to use in comfort. The two women had always liked each other, but from now on, they were to become the best of friends.

Life goes on. Jeannie was surprised at how quickly it returned to normal, that she was able to laugh, feel
happy, think about other things. Even her mother began to smile, though the smile would never again reach her eyes and there was always something sad about it. She and Mrs Bailey – Jeannie was never able to think of her as anything other than ‘Mrs’ – went on the planned holiday to Majorca with the girls.

‘Ida’s the only person in the world I could have gone with,’ Rose said. ‘She’s still grieving for the doctor and me for Alex. Neither of us feels embarrassed about having a little weep now and again.’

Perhaps Chloe had felt chastened by being abandoned in the middle of a feed and left with a stranger, because from that night on she cried less and slept more. She was growing to be a sunny, reasonably well-behaved little girl, chocolate box pretty with her mother’s summer-blue eyes, though she would always be a more demanding, much noisier child than her brother.

Ace was a happy, supremely contented little boy. The Baileys continued to remark on his resemblance to Lachlan, so much so that she began to wonder if Ace actually was his child. And if that was the case, the same could be said for Chloe. She encouraged herself in the belief that they were Lachlan’s children, deliberately ignoring the similarity to Sean in Ace’s sweet, glowing smile and dark blue eyes, and that Chloe’s face in repose bore the same closed expression as Sean’s and her hair was the same sooty black.

Tom came almost every day to tend the garden of Noah’s Ark. Alex had been dead a year, it was spring again, and Tom was on his knees, clearing the soil of weeds at the foot of the hawthorn hedge, when Jeannie’s mother arrived. She often dropped in at about eleven for coffee. The Survivors were touring Australia and Lachlan wouldn’t be home for another two weeks.

Usually, Rose kept out of the way of her first husband, but on that day she was in the kitchen making coffee when Tom came in for his morning cup of tea. He insisted on keeping to the kitchen when in his gardening mode, old habits dying hard.

To Jeannie’s amazement, she heard them talk for a long time. Every now and then, their voices would rise, as if they were having an argument. She resisted the urge to go and see what it was about and stayed to keep an eye on Chloe, who was playing on the carpet with giant Lego. On the patio, Ace was furiously riding his bike around in circles. Connie could be heard singing while she made the beds.

When her mother came in with the coffee, she was smiling. ‘Your dad’s in a terrible predicament. He wants to vote Conservative, as usual, in the election, but if they win, there’ll be a woman prime minister, Mrs Thatcher. He doesn’t think a woman’s capable of running the country.’ The election was in a few weeks’ time.

‘So, what’s he going to do?’ Jeannie asked.

‘I expect he’ll end up voting Tory. I don’t suppose you remember, but years ago, whenever there was an election, he used to tell me where to put my cross. I did as I was told, of course. The poor man nearly had a fit just now when I said I would be voting Labour.’

‘Is that what Alex voted?’

‘No, love. He was Liberal.’ She laughed drily. ‘Your dad asked the same question. It seems even you don’t think I’m capable of making up my own mind about anything that matters.’

‘I probably won’t bother to vote. I never have before.’ There’d always been far more important things to think about.

‘Well, you should,’ her mother said reprovingly. ‘The
Suffragettes went to prison and were force fed, one of them even died, to win the right for women to vote. You’re letting them down.’

Sean McDowd telephoned from New York the day Lachlan was due back from the tour of Australia. It was May now, and the French windows were open for the first time to a bright, sunny morning. In the garden, Tom was giving Ace a piggy back and Chloe was impatiently waiting for her turn. Tom was softer now, far more indulgent with his grandchildren than he’d been with his own children.

Jeannie had neither seen nor spoken to Sean since she’d stayed at the Savoy two years ago. He asked how she was, and she told him she was fine, and he said that he was fine too.

The formalities over, he said casually, ‘I’ll be in London next week. I thought we could meet up for dinner.’

She scrambled round in her brain for a reply. ‘I never get to London these days, Sean,’ she said in a rush. ‘I’m too busy with the children.’

‘Of course, you’ve got two now. Last time we met you only had one.’

Her head swam. Did he
know
! Was he shrewd enough to have noticed the nine-month gaps between them making love and Ace and Chloe being born? She decided to change the subject before the silence between them became noticeably long. ‘Your mother came to stay the other week,’ she said.

‘Yeah, she said she had a great time. She loves your kids, Jeannie.’ He paused. ‘She misses having grandkids of her own.’

‘Well, there’s plenty of time. Sorry, I have to ring off.
I can see Chloe’s fallen over and she’s crying.’ Chloe was gleefully riding on Tom’s back. ‘’Bye, Sean.’

Jeannie slammed down the receiver and clutched her hot face with both hands. He
did
know! But he couldn’t possibly know for certain. All he could do was guess. And even if he guessed the truth, there was nothing he could do about it.

As the hours passed, she wondered if she’d seen a double meaning in Sean’s words that hadn’t been intended. She went over their conversation a dozen times and each time it sounded more innocent. Her fears were almost certainly the product of an over-heated imagination – or a guilty conscience. Even so, that she had come so close to thinking he might have guessed the truth was disturbing.

At half past five, Lachlan rang from Heathrow. He was just about to catch a taxi to London where he would pick up his new Ferrari and drive home. ‘See you around ten-ish, babe. I can’t wait.’ He’d been away six whole weeks.

‘Me neither.’ She asked him not to eat anything. ‘I’m making dinner. And drive carefully, please.’

‘You always say that, babe.’

She visualised him grinning at the other end of the line and grinned back. ‘It always needs saying, otherwise you’d drive like a maniac.’

Chloe was put to bed and Ace followed an hour later, after being allowed to stay up for
Top of the Pops
, on which he occasionally saw his daddy, something he took in his stride. Tonight, Daddy would be there for real, Jeannie promised. ‘He’ll come and kiss you goodnight, like he always does, once he’s home.’

‘Will I be awake?’

‘You might, you might not. Who knows?’

She set a little table in front of the window in the living room, rather than use the vast one in the dining room that could take twenty at a pinch, spreading a lace cloth over it and putting a red candle in the centre. She wasn’t a very adventurous cook and there was only chicken casserole in the oven and prawn cocktails in the fridge for starters. They’d have ice cream for a sweet. The wine was being chilled.

After a bath, she searched through her wardrobe for something special to wear. She hadn’t bought anything new in ages, spending most of her time nowadays in jeans and cotton tops. The few forays she made into town were too rushed to search for the latest fashions. Next time she went, she’d spend a whole day replenishing her wardrobe. Lachlan would be glad to look after Ace and Chloe once he was home. She could even go to London for the day, she thought idly.

And meet Sean McDowd?

No!

She paused in her search, furious with herself for allowing such a thought to even enter her head. How could she possibly consider such a thing when she and Lachlan were so blissfully happy? It didn’t help when she spied a glimpse of something scarlet at the back of the wardrobe and realised it was the dress she’d bought in London when she’d stayed at the Savoy. It hadn’t been worn for more than half an hour. She recalled sitting in the chair, wearing the dress, and waiting for Sean to come. He made her feel uniquely desirable and quite different to the woman other people knew, including her husband.

There was the crunch of wheels on the gravel drive. Lachlan! Earlier than expected. He must have driven like a maniac, after all. She ran to the door in her bathrobe.
He was just getting out of the car; a tall, familiar figure, shabbily dressed as always. She felt a thrust of love that took her breath away.

‘I was just about to put on something incredibly glamorous,’ she cried. ‘I’m not even wearing lipstick.’

He scooped her up in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. ‘Right now, babe, I don’t want you wearing anything.’

An hour later, they sat down to dinner. Jeannie had forgotten all about Sean McDowd until Lachlan poured the wine, raised his glass, and said, ‘To us!’

‘To us!’ It was the same toast Sean had made before the only meal they’d ever had together. Jeannie took a vow never to see him again, not even to think about him, to banish him from her mind for ever.

‘I thought about you all the time while I was away, Jeannie, you and our kids,’ Lachlan said huskily. He reached across the table for her hand. ‘I got to realising what a lucky guy I was, the luckiest guy on earth. Everything I want is in this house.’ He grinned. ‘Including the studio. You, Ace and Chloe, and rock ’n’ roll. They’re all I’ll ever want in this world.’

Thousands of miles away across the Atlantic, in New York, where it was only early evening, Sean McDowd was sitting on the balcony of his fifteenth-floor apartment overlooking Central Park, still smarting from the phone call he’d made to Jeannie earlier in the day. He’d had a date that night, but had cancelled it, not in the mood to conduct trivial conversation with a woman he hardly knew and had no wish to know better.

He would have sworn on his life there was something between him and Jeannie. The first time they’d made
love, he’d taken her by surprise, though she hadn’t objected and gave the impression of having enjoyed it as much as he had. The second occasion, she’d actively encouraged him. Sensitive to every nuance where Jeannie Flowers was concerned, he recalled how she’d given his mother her room number, glancing at him to make sure he’d heard. For two nights, she had welcomed him into her bed, two nights that he would never forget.

It was a year before he was in England again – he would have flown there every week had he thought he could see Jeannie. She’d not long had a baby, Chloe, and Alex Connors had just died. It was the wrong time to suggest that they meet. He’d thought about going to Alex’s funeral. Alex was a decent guy and he’d liked him, but he cringed at the thought of seeing Jeannie and Lachlan together and being reminded that, however eagerly she’d seemed to want
him
, she belonged to someone else.

Another year passed. In two weeks’ time, he would be home again for a series of concerts and had expected Jeannie to jump at the chance of them meeting again. Instead, he’d been given the brush off. It hurt, badly. He didn’t believe that Chloe had fallen over. It was just an excuse for her mother to put down the phone. If only he could see her, touch her, get her alone. Sean was convinced it would take very little for him to seduce her again.

Below him, the traffic edged slowly and noisily around Central Park. The Americans had a habit of crazily honking their horns if they were unable to drive at full pelt, as if the car in front would get a move on if it was honked at enough by the car behind. At this time of day, at most times of day, the traffic was a solid, stationary
mass. Perhaps the horn sounding was just a way of getting rid of their frustration.

The noise was getting on his nerves. Sean got up and went into his apartment, where the walls were covered with brown hessian and the furniture was a mixture of ebony and stainless steel, reflecting, although he didn’t know it, his dark, brooding personality. He turned on the television to CNN for the latest world news and learnt that Margaret Thatcher would almost certainly be Prime Minister of Great Britain by tomorrow morning. The polls had closed and initial predictions were looking good for the Tories. He turned the set off in disgust. He had no truck with politicians from whatever party. All they did was make a mess of the world.