Liverpool Annie (34 page)

'I might turn in a bit sooner than usual.' He went upstairs at half nine and Annie took him up a cup of cocoa. He was sitting up in bed reading the book she'd bought and appeared slightly better.

'Your hair looks nice,' he said. 'And you suit the earrings.'

Annie sat on the bed. 'You always said you preferred it long.'

'I did, but as you reminded me, it's your hair.'

She felt guilty again, but only a little, for going against his wishes. 'So it is,' she said.

Their eyes met, and Annie saw fear in his. He'd always been able to read her mind. Perhaps he sensed their roles had changed.

She telephoned her sister to say she'd arrived safely home. Whoever answered. Tiffany, or possibly Shelley/

Brenda was back, promised to pass the message on. If they did, Annie never heard, Marie didn't turn up for Sara's First Holy Communion in October.

Nor did she come when Auntie Dot threw the best party ever to celebrate her sixtieth birthday. As she was surrounded by her husband, her lads and their wives, ber grandchildren. Dot said emotionally, 'I'm the luckiest woman in the world.'

'And I'm the luckiest man,' said Uncle Bert. Love for his flamboyant wife glowed as fresh in his eyes as the day they were married.

No-one allowed the fact that the Conservatives had won the recent General Election to ruin the great day, even though the new Prime Minister, Edward Heath, declared it was his intention to denationalise everything that moved and do something about the Trade Unions.

Annie received a little scribbled note to say her sister had a part in Dr Who, but no-one would recognise her because she played an alien and the make-up was really weird. Although reconciled to the fact that their paths had parted for ever, Annie couldn't help but wonder if there was anything that would fetch her sister back to Liverpool!

'Thirty!' Sylvia said gloomily. 'Thirty! It wouldn't feel so bad if my divorce hadn't come through the same day.'

Parliament must have had Sylvia and Eric Church in mind when they changed the law to allow divorce by mutual consent after two years' separation. The Decree Absolute had arrived that morning. Eric's family were horrified, but had to concede it was the only way out. If they stayed together, either Eric would kill Sylvia, or

she would kill him, and divorce was more socially acceptable than murder.

'How does it feel?' Annie enquired.

'Being thirty or divorced?'

'I know how thirty feels, don't I?' It had been her own birthday the month before, and it hadn't exactly seemed a landmark, but things were different for her. 'I mean divorced.'

'Odd,' Sylvia said reflectively. 'Peculiar. Very sad.'

'If you'd had children it might have been all right.'

'I doubt it. We would have found something else to fight about, at least Eric would. He's a sadist. He likes hurting people. I feel sorry for that woman he's going to marry.' Eric was already sort of engaged to the daughter of a friend of the family.

'I think you've been dead brave,' Annie declared.

'Thanks,' Sylvia said briefly. 'I'm glad you were around.' She'd vowed never to fall in love again. She'd had enough of men to last a lifetime. 'Perhaps the worst thing is that the Beatles have broken up,' she said tragically. 'It's the end of a great era. There'll never be another decade like the sixties.' The Fab Four had gone their separate ways. When he wasn't studying mysticism with Paul McCartney and George Harrison in the Himalayas, John Lennon was in America with his new wife, Yoko Ono, making records of his own.

They were in Sylvia's bedroom in the Grand, still the same as when Annie had first come on that bitterly cold night when Ruby Livesey had pushed Sylvia into a holly bush. The two women were lost in youthful memories, until Sylvia said brightly. 'I won't be staying in Liverpool now that I'm a free woman again. I cramp Bruno's style. He's dying to screw that new barmaid.'

'Where will you go?' asked Annie.

'I might give London a try. There's more openings when it comes to work, and far more to do socially.'

z86

Annie had suspected this would happen. There seemed Uttle to keep a single woman of thirty in Liverpool. 'I'll miss you,' she sighed.

'It goes without saying I'll miss you too.' Sylvia rolled off the bed. 'Tell me seriously, Annie, do I look thirty?'

'You don't look a day over twenty-nine.' Annie stared at her friend's beautiful face. Sylvia looked no different from when she started at Grenville Lucas sixteen years ago.

'You're a great help.' Sylvia patted her cheeks worriedly. 'Say if I go like Cecy! She's beginning to resemble a wrinkled, dried-up prune.'

'You haven't changed, some people never do. Others grow old before your very eyes.'

'I hope I'm the first sort,' Sylvia said frantically. 'I hope I take after Bruno. He still rakes in the women at fifty-six.'

Annie supposed charming, flirtatious Bruno must have changed a bit since they first met, but she still nursed a secret yearning for him, with his dark laughing face. She thought about Lauri; he was one of the second sort. Of course, he wasn't changing before her eyes, that was ridiculous, but he was nothing like the man with the warm twinkling smile she'd met at Auntie Dot's. It wasn't just that he'd grown so bulky or his hair had thinned - after all. Uncle Bert no longer had the sandy halo she remembered - but Lauri's whole attitude had altered. He was always depressed, rarely smiling. He'd never been the same since he cut his finger on the lawnmower two years ago when she was in London. It was stupid to think someone's personality could alter because of a cut finger, but the finger had never regained its feeling. It remained numb, unbending. Then the numbness spread to the next finger, and the next, until Lauri could hardly move his left hand. Although

he'd been to see a specialist and had a variety of different treatments, the hand remained the same, completely dead, yet the specialist could find nothing wrong.

There was a knock on the door and Bruno came in. He grinned at Annie. 'How much do I pay you to keep my daughter company?'

'I clocked off mentally at half past two.' She'd been working lunchtimes at the Grand since Daniel started school last year. Lauri had been totally opposed, but it was fortunate she'd gone ahead regardless, as her small earnings had helped to subsidise the housekeeping ever since. There'd been no holiday, as originally planned.

'I came to say Cecy's just telephoned,' Bruno said to Sylvia. 'As it's your birthday and my night off, she's invited us both to dinner. I promised to ring back. What shall I tell her?'

Sylvia pulled a face. 'Yes, I suppose, but fancy having nothing else to do on your thirtieth birthday than go to dinner with your parents!'

After several visits to the hospital over nearly a year, it was concluded the cause of Lauri's frozen hand was psychosomatic. Annie was with him in the specialist's office when the diagnosis was made.

'What does that mean?' she asked.

'It's all in the mind.' The specialist was a pleasant man, but rather distant, with a narrow white face and deep-set eyes.

'But I can't feel it,' Lauri said a touch impatiently. 'I can't bend my fingers. How on earth can it all be in my mind?'

'I'm afraid that is a mystery medical science has so far been unable to solve. Some people go blind or lose their power of speech for no apparent reason.'

Lauri's brow creased. 'You mean there's no cure?'

'The cure is within yourself. Only you can make your hand better.'

'Bloody ridiculous!' Lauri said when they were outside. He rarely swore. When they reached the Anglia, Annie said, 'Shall I drive?'

'Don't you trust me?' he snapped.

'Of course I do.' He managed to change the gears by pushing the lever with his wrist, though he couldn't use the hand brake. She was sorry she'd asked. She'd offered to help because he was upset, but he couldn't stand it when she drove. 'I don't want to be seen driven by a woman, even if she is my wife,' he had said soon after she'd passed her test.

As Annie made her way to school to collect the children, she recalled the journey back from the hospital. She kept trying to start a conversation, but Lauri merely answered with a grunt. It wasn't until they were going into the house, that he patted her arm and said, 'Sorry, love. I'm finding this business with my hand hard to take.'

That was the night Fred Quillen came, uninvited, and asked if he could speak to Lauri privately. Annie shooed Sara and Daniel into the garden and left the men in the lounge whilst she got on with the ironing. Fred didn't stay long. After about fifteen minutes, she heard the front door open and went to say goodbye. Fred was letting himself out, there was no sign of Lauri.

Puzzled, she went into the lounge. Lauri was sitting stock still on the settee. His face was pale.

'What's the matter?' Intuition told her what the answer would be.

'They want me out of the co-op. They claim I'm not pulling my weight,' Lauri said dully.

'Oh, love!' Annie breathed. She felt as if her heart could easily split in two on his behalf. She sat down and

laid her head on his shoulder. 'What are we going to do?'

She winced at the bitterness in his voice as he replied, 'They've given me a month to pull my socks up.'

But how could he? Lauri had always been the strongest and most conscientious of workers. She sensed how degraded he must feel. 'Why not tell Fred Quillen what to do with the co-op and find another job?'

Lauri looked at her as if she were mad. 'I'm fifty, Annie, and I've only got the use of one hand. What other job?'

The children came running in. Lauri reached for Sara. 'Come to Daddy, darling.' He adored his daughter. Sometimes, Annie wondered if Sara had taken her own place in Lauri's heart, to the detriment of boisterous Daniel who got on his father's nerves.

She ruffled Daniel's dark hair. 'Help me fetch the rest of the washing in, there's a good boy.'

Annie joined the mothers outside the school gates. Valerie Cunningham wasn't amongst them. As soon as Zachary started school, Valerie had taken a full-time job. Her children were what the newspapers referred to disparagingly as 'latchkey kids', though they spent the hours between school and their mother coming home at the Menins'.

■ It was a blowy November day and russet leaves danced across the playground. A bell went and suddenly the double doors flew open and children came bursting out like wild animals. Daniel was one of the first. He was a fine looking boy, Annie thought tenderly, as her son raced another boy to the gate, a look of determination on his handsome face that reminded her of Marie. The shirt that had been clean on that morning was grubby and the buttons were undone, or possibly lost.

'Hi, Mum,' he grunted when he reached her.

'Hi, Daniel.' She chucked him playfully under the chin. It would have been more than her life was worth to kiss him in public.

Sara followed more sedately. Annie watched lovingly as she paused to catch a falling leaf. A slim, serious girl with gold blonde hair and light blue eyes, at eight years old, her head already came up to her mother's shoulder. 'I've lots of homework,' she said importantly. 'I shall go straight up to my room and get started.' Annie would have to make sure that neither Kelly nor Tracy invaded her room to play.

The Cunninghams gathered round. 'Have we got orange squash at home?' Gary demanded.

'Yes,' said Annie drily. They regarded number seven as home until their mother put in an appearance.

With the children settled in front of the television and Sara in her room, Annie began to make pastry for a steak and kidney pie. She used to feed her own two at four o'clock and she and Lauri would eat later, but since the advent of the Cunninghams, all four Menins ate late. Annie wasn't prepared to subsidise Valerie's wages by providing her children with a meal, and it didn't seem fair to feed just Sara and Daniel.

It must have been the conversation with Sylvia about people changing, but her mind kept going back to the day she'd gone to the hospital with Lauri and Fred Quillen had said he must pull his socks up.

The children had gone to bed and Lauri had still scarcely moved from the settee, when Annie said tentatively, 'Y'know, love, I could take a refresher course and get a job as a secretary. I wouldn't earn as much as you, but it would be enough to live on.'

'I don't understand,' said Lauri.

Annie could tell from the black look on his face that he understood only too well. She plunged deeper into

the mire of his anger. It was important that she make the offer, then it was up to him. 'It's not a law that the man has to be the breadwinner. I'm perfectly willing . . .'

He broke in coldly. 'Do you think I would allow my wife to keep me?'

'I thought I'd mention it. It can be one of the options we discuss.'

'I don't intend to consider such an option, let alone discuss it.'

Annie was secretly relieved. The last thing she wanted was to return to secretarial work.

She said no more and neither did Lauri. He went to bed early with a curt 'Goodnight'. He was usually asleep by the time she went up. She tried to forget they hadn't made love since she'd returned from the weekend with Marie in London.

The ^9 Steps with Robert Donat started on television. She'd been mad on Robert Donat for quite a while until she discovered he was dead. But good though the picture was, she was unable to concentrate. The specialist had said the matter of Lauri's hand was -she searched for the word - psychosomatic, all in the mind, and she was struck with the horrific thought, ''Perhaps it's all my fault.^

It was essential she talk to someone; not Sylvia, who'd say tell Lauri to get stuffed. Tomorrow, she'd go and see Auntie Dot.

'I have never,' Dot scoffed, 'heard such a load of ould cobblers in me life. Lauri's hand's seized up just because you had your hair cut! Come off it, girl, talk sense.'

'You're exaggerating. Auntie,' Annie said stiffly. She was rather put out when Dot's face turned more and more incredulous as she came out with her tortured

explanation for Lauri's hand. 'It's not just me hair. It's everything. I'm no longer the girl he married.'