Nest of Sorrows (23 page)

He covered his face with his hands, and she was just on the verge of forcing herself to apologize for her tone when the back door flew open.

‘Geoff! Kate! Please, somebody, help me!’

Pristine! Kate clenched jaw and fists. ‘In the dining room,’ she called eventually.

Christine arrived in the doorway between dining room and kitchen, her face whitening, legs obviously buckling as she clung to the door jamb.

‘Catch her,’ yelled Kate, but she was too late. Poor old Pris lay flat out, head on the carpet, feet on the kitchen tiles. Even this had been done tidily, thought Kate as she and Geoff struggled through the house with the dead weight of their neighbour.

They placed her on a sofa, where she came to after several seconds. ‘Where am I?’ she groaned. ‘Where’s Derek? Oh Derek, Derek, no . . . no . . . NO!’

Geoff knelt on the floor and rubbed Pristine’s hands. Kate knew he’d seen this done in an old black-and-white Bette Davis film, so she didn’t expect it to have much effect. Rubbing people’s hands and burning feathers under their noses only worked in movies. ‘Here.’ She thrust a cup of brandy between the woman’s lips as soon as there came a more positive sign of life. ‘Here. Take a sip.’ She glanced at Geoff. ‘Better a cup than a glass. She might bite through a glass, poor soul. She must tell us what the matter is, she looks awful.’

The brandy went down in one huge noisy gulp, then there followed a severe attack of coughing during which Geoff patted Pristine’s back and looked meaningfully at his wife. His eyes said ‘you shouldn’t have given her the brandy’, but Kate wasn’t taking him on. Her attention was given completely to Pris, who looked as if she’d been clobbered with a sledge hammer.

‘He’s dead.’ This pronouncement arrived once the throat was cleared. ‘He died at the top of Deane during a race. And he was winning, too, he had the yellow shirt . . .’ The word ‘shirt’ was elongated into a high-pitched wail.

Kate swallowed deeply. This was dreadful. She would not call Christine Pris any more. Any woman who had lost a husband so cherished was deserving of respect and good treatment. ‘Dear God, Chris. I am so sorry. So very, very sorry . . .’ And so inadequate. What could one say to a woman who had been the butt of jokes for so long? How might one comfort a person whose malapropisms could cause hilarious laughter at any second? Not with Geoff, though. Geoff never laughed at Christine’s gaffes, didn’t notice half the time.

‘It was one of those artickerlated lorries,’ said Chris now. ‘It just folded up, sort of, oh . . . oh . . .’

‘Jackknifed?’ suggested Geoff.

‘That’s it. And Derek got killed under the load.’

‘What was it carrying?’ asked Geoff irrelevantly.

‘Potatoes.’

Kate turned away. She would never look a bag of chips in the eyes again. Trust old Derek to end up mashed. And who ever heard of an articulated lorry carrying vegetables?

‘We never even had a baby,’ moaned Chris now. ‘It was my fault, not Derek’s. My filipine tubes are blocked, but there was nothing wrong with my Derek. He was . . . he was . . . the vocal point of my whole life.’

Kate told herself sharply that she was not a nice person. Noticing Christine’s vocabulary at a time like this was a very un-nice thing to do.

‘I’ve got nobody,’ wailed the voice from the sofa. ‘No family for the funeral, nobody to come and care about him. Or about me.’

‘We’ll come. Kate and I will come. Won’t we?’ He threw this last short question over his shoulder.

‘Of course we will.’ Kate faced the prostrate figure of her ‘perfect’ neighbour. ‘Make her some cocoa, Geoff,’ she whispered. ‘I daresay she needs a woman just now.’ When they were alone, Kate fetched a footstool and sat by Chris’s side, almost wincing as the grief-stricken woman gripped her hands with a strength that was near to iron. ‘Talk to me,’ said Kate gently. ‘Tell me anything or everything, whatever you feel like.’

‘You know the most ridicerlous thing, Kate?’

‘What?’

‘Well, it’s the thing he enjoyed most except for bikes.’

‘No, love. You tell me about it.’

‘Jacketed potatoes with creamed mush-erooms. When we went out on the tandem, we always had to stop at some cafeteera and ask if they did creamed mush-erooms in jacketed potatoes. That was because they never served things like that at the orphanage.’

‘Dear Lord,’ breathed Kate. ‘Which orphanage?’

‘Where we met, where we fell in love. I was eight and he was nearly nine. We used to touch hands over the fence. Boys and girls were separated except on Sundays. We did this pledge, Derek and I. He would teach me to read on a Sunday afternoon if I would marry him and look after him.’

Tears pricked Kate’s lids. ‘And . . . you both stuck to it, eh?’

‘Oh yes. I used to draw a picture every week, of a house with a nice garden and a hedge and a gate. On Sundays, I gave him the pictures. The curtains were always nice bright colours. We like colours. In the orphanage, everything was green and cream and brown. I made him a nice house, Kate.’

‘You did. You certainly did.’

Christine sighed and turned her face away. ‘It was hard pretending to be like the rest of you. We made relations up, said we were going visiting mums and dads. That’s why Derek was so quiet with everybody. He didn’t want you asking why nobody ever visited.’

Kate blinked rapidly. She knew what it was like to be unloved, didn’t she? Oh yes, she’d had a father, but . . . Her heart went out to the woman on the sofa. ‘We never guessed, Chris.’

‘Didn’t you?’ She faced Kate again now. ‘Did we seem normal?’

‘Of course you were normal, you still are. In fact, I’d say you’re quite extraordinary in the best sense of the word. There is no shame in being an orphan, none at all.’

‘There is. Some days, there weren’t enough knickers to go round, so we had to wear yesterday’s. I have sixty pairs now, Kate, all different colours. I love colours. And it was so hard for Derek getting qualified, winning scholarships to Thornleigh, trying to pretend he was just like the other boys. He came out top in his electrical engineer class at the technical college, nothing he didn’t know about electrics. He was so strong and so good. What’ll I do, Kate? What’ll I do?’

It was like Maureen all over again, only grimmer, more final – and certainly more desolate. ‘Do you have friends?’

‘Just who Derek worked with, and we don’t want them knowing too much. There’s you and Geoff. And you don’t like me much, do you?’

Kate’s heart felt as if it were filled to bursting point. A great pity welled up inside her chest and she hugged the trembling woman tightly. ‘I like you, Chris. I understand you now. Try not to be afraid . . .’

‘I don’t know anything about funerals and monumentals. I want him to have a nice one with a bike on it. Bikes were his freedom. He never had a bike till he was twenty.’

‘Geoff will see to everything.’

‘We’re Catholics.’

‘That’s OK, so am I. Not that I practise, but I know the rudiments. We’ll sort it all out for you.’

‘I can’t go home, Kate. Derek’s not there. I can’t go to sleep in that bed without my cuddle. We loved cuddles, both of us. Neither of us got cuddles till we married one another.’

It was all too much for Kate. Great sobs racked her body as she poured out her grief for Chris, for her own desolate childhood, for Derek whom she’d never troubled to understand, for Maureen and her children. Last, but never least, she cried for her baby, the baby Chris would have deserved and loved. So when Geoff returned with the cocoa, he found the situation greatly altered, for it was Chris who now did the comforting.

‘Come on, Kate,’ he said tightly. ‘That’s not helping Christine.’

‘Oh yes it is.’ Chris smiled through her own tears. ‘It’s lovely to know someone else cared about my Derek. This puts a different complexity on everything, as my Derek would have said. There may be only three of us, but we can give him a good send-off, God bless him.’

‘There’ll be more than three,’ sobbed Kate. ‘I can promise you that. Every biker in Bolton will come out for him.’

‘Yes,’ said Chris, calmer now. ‘I’d forgotten about the clubs. Let’s hope it stays fine, eh?’

It didn’t stay fine. But the riders of Bolton lined up, each man holding his bike to attention while Derek Halls was carried to his last rest. Kate felt sorry for the bikers, because they had opted to wear their various ‘uniforms’, just thin shirts and nylon shorts, not a single umbrella between them. Chris had chosen a tasteful headstone, though this item would not be on show until the following week. In white Italian marble, it was a simple slab that stated the bare facts, then, under the carving of a racing bike, the words ‘ON HIS WAY TO FREEDOM’. As the only confidante of Chris, Kate felt truly moved by such restraint, because she knew how many years, how much feeling lay behind these five stark words.

After the funeral, they all returned to Chris’s house where Dora presided over a feast of enormous proportions. There were vol-au-vents and sausage plaits, cheese straws and quiches, hot and cold drinks and a wide selection of puddings. But there were no ‘mush-erooms’ or ‘jacketed potatoes’. Kate had considered making this delicacy of Derek’s, but had finally decided that it would be wrong to include it. For one thing, it might have underlined Derek’s absence; for another, the poor man had been killed by his two favourite things, bikes and spuds.

She wandered with her glass of mulled wine into the empty kitchen. Kate didn’t particularly like herself these days, and she was learning that not liking herself was one of the causes of her depressive phases. But she had many reasons to question herself just now, many attitudes to analyse.

There was the ‘Pristine’ thing for a start. She had condemned poor old Chris without ever giving her a chance. Derek too. Skinless, gutless, spineless and boring . . . She slammed her glass on to the surface by the cooker. If she was going to be a cartoonist, a commentator and critic of her times, then she had better put a stop to this horribly superior way of assessing people. People, like diamonds, were multi-faceted, rare, unique, very special.

Then there was the way she treated Dora, sending her off to the doctor’s with a bottle big enough to fill her shopping bag. Not a nice thing to do to anyone, and sad old Dotty couldn’t help her hypochondria. Dora’s ‘illnesses’ were probably an illness in themselves. And Melanie weeping for a mother she’d scarcely had, and Geoff being treated like a whipped dog. By God, how she had set about him lately, what a harridan she was becoming! After all those years of passivity, why had she suddenly turned? Was this the proverbial worm, was she justified?

She sank on to Chris’s pine bench. What a bloody mess, eh? Everyone seemed to be losing a husband. Maureen’s had gone off, Chris’s had been wiped out. Those two women would probably give an arm and a leg for what Kate had now. Security, a home, a man. Yet Kate Saunders, with all her airs and graces, was just going to turn and walk away! When, though? Melanie wasn’t accepting the situation. Chris wasn’t fit to be left, Maureen was still running round like a headless chicken, Geoff wore an air of great hurt, while Dora was feeling decidedly put upon. Running Kate’s home on a voluntary basis was one thing; to be forced into it would be another matter altogether. And there’d be no Kate to preside over, no-one to punish, no inferior wife to . . .

Stop it! She beat her hands against the table. It was happening again. In her mind, she was destroying people. It was like cutting up caterpillars or taking the wings off flies, it was not a fair fight. Dora was Dora, Geoff was Geoff, Mel was Mel. A leaden sky hung over the window and Kate stared at it as if searching for a ray of light. Yes! That was it! She must accept them as they were, but she must also accept herself. The main thing was accepting herself. This was how she was made, she had her faults and her good points just like everyone else. Taking the wings off and making judgements was probably a part of what she had to do, the thing she was moving towards.

Her head was in her hands when the door opened. ‘What am I going to do, Kate?’ The eternal cry now, and in that tiny little-girlish voice. ‘They’re all quite happy in there, plenty of refresh-erments. What’ll I do? There’s nothing I can do, Kate.’

Kate straightened. ‘Sit down, love.’ She waited until Chris’s earnest face was level with hers. ‘How has he left you? Financially, I mean?’

‘Oh. Yes. He had one of those mortgage pertection policies. The house is mine and he was well-insured. There’s no money worry. But . . . it’s all day and all night, isn’t it? Every day and every night. I think Father Costigan’s drunk,’ she added irrelevantly.

‘Priests always get drunk at funerals. It’s a perk of the job.’

‘What’ll I do with my life?’

Kate smiled and reached across to pat a rigid hand. ‘You’ll free some women, pet.’

‘Eh? Free some women? Me?’

‘Yes, you. Stop putting yourself down, Christine Halls, before I give you a good smacking. You love children, don’t you?’

‘Oh yes. Only I couldn’t have any. My o-verries are all right, but it’s these filipine . . .’

‘Yes, I know, Chris. Damned nuisance, blocked Fallopian tubes.’

After a small pause, Chris shrugged and said, ‘See? I can’t even talk properly. I’ve got my accent better, Derek said so. Only I can’t do big words. So how do I free women when I can’t do big words?’

‘Margaret Liptrot on Rookery Lane would give her right arm for a lady like you. She needs to work. Hubby’s gone back to do his Ph.D., so they’re living on fresh air. A qualified nurse like Margaret could work if someone would mind the kids.’

‘Oh.’

‘You could take a couple of under-fives, then pick a few up after school, keep them till the mums finish work.’

‘Like one of them creeches?’

‘Yes, like a crèche. You would be doing a tremendous thing for this community, Chris.’

‘Would I?’

‘Of course.’

‘And you’ll help me? To set it up?’

‘Initially, yes. But you’ll soon get the hang of it.’

Chris smiled weakly. ‘There’ll be nappies on my line after all. Nappies and little coatees and bibs. I can pretend they’re mine . . .’

‘Don’t get too close. I find at school that it’s important to keep a distance. Otherwise, some of the little beggars would have my heart wrung dry.’ She thought briefly about little Rosie Collins and her tormented brother, was momentarily back in that awful hospital with the sweet dying child. Yes, a heart could be broken, couldn’t it? She shook herself visibly.