Memories Are Made of This (10 page)

‘So that's why our Sam doesn't bother with women,' murmured Jeanette. ‘He's still in love with Carol. Poor Sam!'

‘Those letters and his memories are all he has left of her.' Hester's eyes were bright and shiny.

‘Don't be getting yourself upset,' said Jeanette, reaching out a hand to her.

Hester wiped her eyes. ‘I know it's stupid because it's thirteen years since it happened and I never knew her that well. Even so—'

‘It's not stupid! You love our Sam and that's why you're sad. The old witch doesn't care whom she hurts. He's in a right temper with her so perhaps this time he'll seriously think of leaving home.'

Hester dug a fork into a sausage. ‘If he does we'll miss him, won't we?'

At that moment they heard the front door slam. They both started to their feet and hurried from the kitchen. They were too late to see who left the house, but as they reached the front door, Sam appeared in the parlour doorway, sucking his wrist.

‘What happened?' asked Jeanette.

‘She bit me! She's stormed out, said something about none of us deserving her and that we'll miss her when she's gone,' he replied.

‘I'd miss her like a hole in the head,' said Jeanette, her eyes glinting.

‘She'll be back,' said Hester gloomily. ‘She hasn't had time to pack any clothes.'

‘She's not going to leave,' growled Sam, reaching for a cigarette.

Hester and Jeanette sighed in unison. ‘If only wishes could come true,' said Hester. ‘Anyway, are you OK, Sam? Do you need some antiseptic on that bite?'

‘Probably. I managed to keep my hands off her throat, but it was a struggle and I think she knew it,' he said grimly. ‘Not that she apologized for her actions, and she must have known the letters she burnt meant a lot to me after the fuss I made. This time she's gone too far!'

‘So what are you going to do?' asked Jeanette.

‘I'm thinking about it. Right now I want something to eat,' said Sam, heading for the kitchen.

Hester followed him but Jeanette went upstairs, hoping Ethel had not locked her bedroom and she could search for her savings book and snaffle her own bedroom key. She was out of luck and so returned to the kitchen.

She was just in time to hear Hester say, ‘I just wish she didn't put me in such a quake. It goes back to when I was a kid. One look from her used to fill me with dread and have me quivering in my wellies!' She glanced across at Jeanette as she sat down. ‘I've just remembered. I'm on nights this week. If she comes back, you'll be all on your own.'

‘Yes, I'm out, too,' said Sam.

‘When's Dad due home?' asked Jeanette.

‘I don't know,' said Hester.

Jeanette sighed.

‘You can always put a chair under the door handle on the inside,' said Sam.

‘We shouldn't need to take such measures,' said Jeanette angrily.

‘No, we shouldn't,' said Sam, grim-faced. ‘Dad should be tougher with her. I'm really fed up of her.'

Hester said, ‘You can't change people.'

‘I don't agree,' said Jeanette, picking up her plate of food and putting it back in the oven to heat up. ‘So what are you going to do, Sam? Leave home?'

He hesitated. ‘I thought of it but she'll think she's won if I do that.'

It was not until he finished his meal and lit another cigarette that he spoke again, his voice harsh. ‘I might have thought twice about eating my supper if she'd cooked it after our row.'

‘You really think she'd poison you?' Jeanette was astounded.

‘A lot of murders take place in families,' said Sam.

‘But aren't they generally crimes of passion?' said Jeanette.

‘I think she's always hated me with a passion,' said Sam, his eyes hard as he gazed at his sisters through the cigarette smoke.

‘She hates me, too,' said Jeanette, frowning.

‘And me,' said Hester. ‘It makes you wonder why she stays around.'

‘Where else would she go?' said Sam. ‘In all the years she's lived with us, I've never heard mention of any friends.'

‘That's because she's a nasty bit of work. I suppose it's her having been a prison wardress that makes her the way she is,' said Hester.

‘They can't all be like that,' said Jeanette. ‘Maybe she was always a bit of a bully? For reasons we don't know she could have hated her sister because she was pretty and then envied her having a husband and child.'

‘Talking of violent old women, you'll never guess what happened today,' said Hester, getting the biscuit tin from a cupboard. ‘A friend of mine arrested a seventy-two-year-old widow for slashing clothes in Marks and Sparks with a pair of scissors.'

Sam said, ‘Did she give a reason why she did it?'

‘Not that I know.'

‘I reckon they'll put it down to nerves and senility,' said Sam. ‘She could have lost her husband in the Great War and possibly sons in World War Two.'

‘Maybe Aunt Ethel did have a fella and he was killed at the front, and that made her resentful of those who still had husbands and explains why she finds it difficult to love people,' mused Jeanette.

Sam rolled his eyes.

‘I think she might love Dad,' said Hester.

Jeanette stood up. ‘I'm not so sure about that. I'm going to listen to the wireless and forget about her.
Ray's a Laugh
is on soon.'

‘I think I'll listen with you before I go out,' said Hester. ‘I could do with cheering up. You all right on your own, Sam?'

‘Of course I am,' he said shortly.

Sam drank his tea and then took Carol's remaining letters upstairs. There had been a time, just after Carol was killed, when he could not bear reading them. He sat on his bed and unfolded one of them, noticing that the ink was fading in places. It was bad enough that his great-aunt had destroyed several, without the knowledge that one day soon he might not be able to read those he still possessed. Why had she had to go and burn them? It mattered, even though he knew the contents off by heart.

He sighed, thinking if only Carol had stuck to their original plan, which was for him to visit her at her aunt's smallholding near Ormskirk, she would still be alive. According to her aunt she had been missing Liverpool and had planned to surprise him. What so upset him was that he had never got to see her when she did arrive in Liverpool. She had been killed before he discovered about her plan to visit. He gazed down at Carol's neat copperplate handwriting and thought he must find another hiding place for the letters.

He lay on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, wondering, despite what he had said to his sisters, whether it was time for him to move on and find himself not only a place of his own – not easy with the housing situation being what it was
–
but a wife as well. He had begun to yearn for the comfort that only a woman could provide. He had been having dreams about Dorothy Wilson, who had been Carol's best friend, that just wouldn't go away. He had briefly caught sight of a woman coming out of the stage door at the Playhouse a short while ago and had been convinced it was Dorothy. If he had not been in a rush, he just might have checked her out there and then. Maybe it was guilt that had prevented him from visiting the theatre later to see if it really was her.

He closed his eyes and the memory of the younger Dorothy's face impressed itself against his eyelids. He imagined burying himself in her soft feminine body and could almost smell the sweet fragrance of Pond's face cream and ‘Evening in Paris' scent. She had been slightly older than Carol. His heart began to race. She was smiling eagerly at him and her lips were swollen from his kisses. Her hair was the colour of ripening wheat, a lighter shade than his own, but hers had a silky texture to it that his lacked. He remembered how it had brushed against his bare chest. They should never have done what they did, but both of them had been hurting, so they had spent that May evening of Carol's funeral in Dorothy's parents' bed, whilst her mother was at the munitions factory and her father in the army on the south coast.

He remembered how Dorothy had encouraged him to let himself go, despite his attempts to hold back. At least from the noises she had made he knew that she had got pleasure from the act. Maybe that was why afterwards they had avoided meeting again? Eventually, he heard that she was carving out an acting career for herself and was on tour with a theatrical company. He had worried briefly that she might have got pregnant, but obviously she had been OK or she would have been in touch.

A wry smile twisted his mouth, remembering how she had talked about one day seeing her name up in lights. At least she hadn't given up on her dream. He would like to see her again but had no idea where she was right now. Maybe he should visit her widowed mother? That was if she was still alive. He had not been able to face her after having spent a couple of hours in her bed with Dorothy and so had avoided the street where she lived for years.

‘Are you all right, Sam?'

Hester's voice startled him and he banged his head on the headboard as he sat up. ‘Damn!' he groaned, rubbing the sore spot. ‘Did you have to shout so loud?'

‘Were you asleep?'

‘Almost,' he lied, yawning loudly. ‘What do you want?'

‘To talk to you about something our Jeanette's just told me.'

‘Is it important?'

‘I think so, but if you'd rather I left you alone . . .'

There was a note in her voice that caused him to roll off the bed and open the door. ‘No, it's OK. Come in.'

Hester entered the room and rested her hands on the foot of the bed. ‘Jeanette went to see that priest!'

‘What priest?'

‘The priest who was at the chippy!'

Sam stared at her. ‘I suppose she's hoping she can make contact with that bloke who was hit in the face?'

‘Too right she is,' said Hester.

‘So what did he have to say?'

‘Apparently the bloke was in a rush that evening to see his father who was seriously ill in hospital.'

‘Do we have his name?'

‘David Jones.'

Sam's eyebrows shot up. ‘Now there's a name that's two a penny. So when is she planning on seeing him?'

‘She's not because he didn't put an address on his letter to the priest. Apparently his father died and he's helping his mother move house.' Hester smiled. ‘Interesting, though, that his name is David Jones. The couple I stayed with when I was evacuated were called Jones. If you remember I wrote to Myra for a while but then she stopped writing. I've always regretted losing touch with her. She had a nephew called David. He called a couple of times at the house, so it's possible it's the same person.'

‘So what are you planning on doing? Writing to Myra Jones to see if, by the strangest coincidence, her nephew is Jeanette's David Jones?'

Hester's face fell. ‘You think it's a daft idea?'

‘I didn't say that.'

She gnawed on her lip. ‘I don't want to be a nuisance.'

‘Why should you think you'd be a nuisance?'

‘Aunt Ethel said that was why Myra stopped writing – because she couldn't be bothered with me. Do you
think—?'

‘Do I think the old cow was jealous of your relationship with her? It wouldn't surprise me if she destroyed Myra's letters to stop you writing to her,' said Sam.

For a moment Hester was too choked to speak, and then she managed to say, ‘I've no proof.'

‘What's that matter? Write to the woman and see what she has to say.'

Hester took a deep breath and there was a militant light in her eyes. ‘I will!'

‘Good on you, girl,' said Sam, smiling.

‘I won't mention it to Jeanette unless I hear back. She told me she's going to the Grafton on Saturday with that friend of hers, Peggy McGrath.'

‘The one that was really the cause of all the trouble in the chippy?' said Sam, shaking his head.

‘Should we try and put a stop to her going?'

Sam hesitated. ‘No. She's rebellious enough as it is, and we don't want her to think we're siding with Aunt Ethel against her. She's told you what she's planning on doing, so let's be happy with that and hope she's got enough common sense to stay out of trouble this time.'

‘Jeannie, is this yours?' Mrs Cross held up the oiled cloth bag containing a frock and sensible low-heeled shoes.

Jeanette looked up from wiping a table top. ‘Yes, Mrs Cross. I hope you don't mind my leaving it in the back, only I'm going dancing this evening at the Grafton and I didn't want to go home first.'

A young man over by the jukebox glanced her way and for a moment she thought he was going to speak, but then he looked away and put a coin in the slot and the next moment the strains of ‘Three Coins in the Fountain' sung by Frank Sinatra came flooding out. Earlier she had thought the young man looked vaguely familiar.

‘I love this, don't you?' said a girl seated at a table near the window. She and the young man had entered the milk bar about a quarter of an hour ago and ordered milk shakes and sticky buns. Jeanette had heard him call her Irene.

‘I've seen the film,' said Mrs Cross. ‘You should go and see it, Jeanette. It's almost as good as a holiday, and much cheaper. You can imagine yourself in Rome. Louis Jourdan who plays a prince is so handsome, you wouldn't believe it.'

‘He's a bit of a playboy in it, though,' said Irene. ‘I preferred Rossano Brazzi myself. I've never seen him in anything else before but he's a real dish.'

‘I'd like to go to Italy,' said Jeanette. ‘My brother's saving up for a car and he was talking about going abroad.'

‘I've an older friend at the art school who's hoping to go to Italy to study next year,' said Irene.

‘Lucky her!' said Jeanette. But before she could continue the conversation another girl entered.