Nest of Sorrows (27 page)

‘Daylight robbery. I’d rather you than me, sweetheart.’

Kate fiddled with the stiff drawers of the dresser, averting her face and keeping her tone light as she said, ‘I’ll be leaving school at the end of the summer term.’

There followed a long and uncomfortable silence.

‘Did you hear me, Maureen?’

‘I heard. Damned stupidity! How are you going to keep yourself? Giving up a deputy’s job just like that? I can’t believe it! Perhaps you do need a psychiatrist after all.’

‘I have to leave.’

‘Why? Bloody why? Now of all times?’

Kate shrugged. ‘There’s something I have to do.’

‘Something? What, though? Who’s going to feed you while you do your “something”? Who’s going to pay the rent if you don’t go for some sort of settlement with Geoff?’

Kate rounded on her friend. ‘Yes, I’d rather me than you, too. This is what I want. Absorb it, come to terms. I never asked for automatic washers and food mixers. I can work here, I can sit at that table in the alcove and . . .’

‘And what?’

‘Well, until summer I can mark books and plan lessons.’

‘Riveting. And what do you do when Standard Four’s had all its marking done? Will you get a telly?’

‘Might.’

‘What about your social life? You can’t stop in here vegetating.’

Kate said nothing.

‘It’s this thing of yours, isn’t it? This whatever-it-is, this grand bloody project you’re mapping out. Well? Do I have to crawl about on this kitchen floor and beg? What are you up to, Kate Saunders? Are you working on a formula to change water to oil? Or is it sculpture? Writing?’ She stamped an impatient foot as Kate shook her head. ‘Well what the hell is it, then? Come on, we’ve been friends ever since you started at Daubhill School, surely you can tell me?’

Kate sighed. ‘Only Melanie knows. Even then, I didn’t intend . . . Oh, Maureen! Remember when Phil left you and you couldn’t talk about the mess? When you said that talking about it would make it more real? I feel that talking about my ambition will make it less real. I don’t want to tempt fate.’

Maureen coughed and lit a cigarette. ‘I showed you my kitchen, didn’t I? I showed you mine, now you show me yours.’

‘This is my kitchen. You are standing in my kitchen.’

Maureen flounced into the other room and flung herself into an armchair. ‘You can fetch your own bloody stuff from the van, then.’

Kate followed and seated herself opposite her friend. ‘Stop sulking. If a child at school carried on like this, I’d put him in a corner on his own. Behave yourself.’

‘Shan’t.’

Maureen studied her nail polish and flicked cigarette ash on to the hearth rug, while Kate tapped the leather arm of her chair. ‘I’m doing cartoons,’ she said finally. ‘I’ve already started a strip in a boys’ comic, and I’m trying to break into newspapers. My adult character’s called Boothroyd; he’s a drake but I can make him look like anyone, so I hope to do a bit of political stuff. My children’s character is Boothroyd Junior, he’s a drake too and he goes to school and causes mayhem . . .’

‘Great!’ Maureen’s face was almost split by the width of her grin. ‘And I knew it was something like that, anyway. I’ve watched you scribbling in corners, girl. You’ll be a household name. I’ll be able to say “I knew her when she had to put shillings in the gas meter”!’

‘Rubbish.’ But Kate knew that her own face registered pleasure. ‘It’s only a beginning, Mo. But it’s a thing I have to try.’

‘You’ll do it. I know you will. When I think of the way you transformed the school with your pictures. This is it, then? This is your reason for giving up your job and your marriage?’

‘Yes.’ The lie was getting easier now. Though it wasn’t a complete untruth, was it?
Boys’ Laughs
had taken her work, and the editor had promised to put some of her adult stuff under a few of the ‘right’ noses.

‘Just wait till I tell Phil . . .’

‘That’s just it, you mustn’t! I’m sick of failing, Mo. Sick of being a bad wife and a poor mother – I was even judged an unfit daughter, just because I wasn’t a son! Let me keep my secret. Let me shock them all. Please? God’s honour?’

‘OK, kid. They’ll have to pull out all my lovely fingernails before I squeal.’

‘And your toenails too?’

‘It’s a deal.’

They brought in the van’s contents and distributed them throughout Kate’s new home. Then, when everything was tidily put away, Kate packed a bag for a week, school dress, suit and blouses, shoes, toiletries, nightdress and some items of underwear. They sat side by side on the bed.

‘Are you ready for it?’ asked Maureen, her tone quiet but amused.

‘Ready? I’ve never been ready for my mother, not for thirty-four years. For the first twenty, I didn’t even know what she was thinking! Now she’s . . . well . . . strong.’ She straightened her shoulders. ‘But I’m stronger. The question is, Mo, is my mother ready for me?’

Cleaning the education offices was not much fun, but it was the best that Rachel Murray could expect at the age of fifty-five. Having been forced by circumstances to leave school at just turned thirteen, she had spent her life being pushed from pillar to post in the cotton mills, so she now turned to cleaning for a rest. It meant being up and about before five o’clock every weekday morning; it also meant shoving a mop and bucket round empty marble halls for a couple of hours in splendid isolation, but it was better than the noise.

Noise had always got to Rachel; the clatter of the spinning mule had never held much appeal, while the raised voices of workmates, who usually seemed to celebrate their evening release by screaming all the way to heaven, had driven her to distraction. And home hadn’t been a peaceful place, not until he had died. When she thought of him dying, she always blessed herself. Not so much in prayer for his salvation but more to assuage the guilt because of her relief. It wasn’t right feeling glad about being a widow; it wasn’t right to celebrate anyone’s demise. But every year when a certain date came round, she bought fish and chips and a pint of stout, then had a quiet little party all to herself in the back kitchen.

Rachel gave the impression of being a hard woman. Most of the neighbours from the ‘good old days’ had moved on or died, and the replacements found her unapproachable because she wouldn’t linger on the corner for a good old gossip; nor was she given to borrowing a cup of sugar or half a block of marg. Number 39’s window and sill were always wiped before she set off for work, and nobody could have a chat with someone who cleaned her outside at half past four in a morning. Then there was her step; she had been the first to get it painted red so that it only needed cardinal once a week. Many in Maybank Street still used donkeystones, and during the daily ritual of step-cleaning much social intercourse took place. But number 39’s combed and varnished door always remained closed during such exchanges.

She had done her best with the tiny weaver’s cottage. In bygone days, Maybank Street had used to be slightly up-market, a place where the higher earners had dwelt, but it now teetered on the brink of slumdom. There were two rooms down and two up, just a living room and kitchen to the ground floor and a couple of dampish bedrooms up the stairs. But Rachel had installed a bath in her kitchen, a proper plumbed-in bath with taps and a drain. This treasure was kept hidden under a wooden bench which she had covered with a custom-made mattress and some colourful cushions. Here Melanie had slept in younger and more carefree years when it had been ‘fun’ to snuggle down in a kitchen. But it wasn’t good enough for Melanie any more. It wasn’t good enough for Rachel, and she intended to get out at the earliest opportunity. Not like Dora Saunders, though. Oh, no, she wasn’t going to climb out of the gutter by stepping on her child’s back. Rachel had a plan, a plan no-one knew about. And the longer she kept it to herself, the better.

On the built-in sideboard to the right of the fireplace stood all her photographs. Judith was in the middle, dark-eyed, dark-haired and beautiful, Judith in her gown and mortar-board, a ribbon-tied scroll hugged tightly to her breast. This centrepiece was flanked by Katherine’s wedding photos, then smaller pictures of Melanie in a sand-pit, on a donkey at Blackpool, on a proper pony at one of the many shows where she had taken rosettes.

Rachel sat on her green moquette sofa, a mug of strong tea in one hand, a ginger biscuit in the other. It was Sunday. She liked Sundays. All her housework had been completed the day before, everything shone and glistened with polish, each tuft on the rug stood to attention after yesterday’s beating. The clock ticked and the large Baird television that Kate rented for her stood silent in a corner. Peace. No-one ever came on Sundays. During a term week, Kate visited each lunchtime because her school was just round the corner, and although Rachel was always glad to see her daughter, she looked forward to a weekend’s silence.

Kate. Oh Katherine! What had the teachers said? ‘Judith is clever, but Katherine is brilliant’. Huh. And what had she done with her brilliance? Like the man in the Bible, Rachel’s younger daughter had squandered her talents, or buried them beneath an early marriage and a diploma that was hardly worth the paper it was printed on.

It was wrong to have a favourite, and Rachel knew that. But ever since the red-haired mite had been delivered into her hands, Rachel’s heart had been lost forever. Blinking kids! They never did what you wanted them to do, never listened. How many times had she warned them, ‘don’t get married young, look at me, I was nineteen when I had my first baby, and not twenty-one when I had my second.’

The older girl had taken Mam’s advice all right. Judith was now in Washington, doing translations for senators and president’s aides, using her talent for languages in a way that kept her away from England, away from her mother and, it seemed, away from marriage.

But Katherine was another kettle altogether. Headstrong, stupid, deaf to advice . . . Rachel sipped her tea and sucked on the dipped biscuit. Katherine should never have married Dora Saunders’ precious lad; Katherine should never have married at all. Really, everything was the wrong way round. If Judith hadn’t been such a hard worker at her books, she would have been married by now, married with a few children and a smile happier than the strained expression that showed in recent photographs. Judith was very likely built for marriage and motherhood. She was placid, kind, gentle, too good to be terribly interesting. Though there was a coldness in Judith, a quiet strength that sometimes made Rachel wonder. Did Judith get up to no good on the sly? Was she as virtuous as she seemed? Rachel shook herself sharply, tut-tutting as she just managed to save her tea from spilling. She settled herself again. Aye, compared to the older girl, Katherine was a coiled spring, all wound up and ready to jump. Where the hell could she jump to? Nowhere. Nowhere at all. So she hopped about between Edgeford and Daubhill, happy in neither place, discontented with marriage, unfulfilled as a teacher.

‘I could shake her. I could. She might be going on thirty-five, but I still feel like giving her a darned good hiding.’ This was said to Puddy-Tat, the large striped monster who was Rachel’s sole live-in companion. ‘I told her how she’d finish up. Don’t you dare claw at that chair, I’ll have them blinking feet of yours surgically removed one of these days! Where was I? Oh yes, our Katherine. There’s summat brewing, Puddy. I could see it in her face on Friday. Right from a kiddy, she’s shown in her face when she’s been up to no good. And I’ll be in it, just you wait and see. When she topples over, it’ll be me she runs to. Psychiatrists!’ She spat this large word as if it were poison. ‘She needs a psychiatrist like I need haemorrhoids!’

The cat gave a small yowl then rolled over to expose his underside, paws coming up to beg for a scratch on the belly, but Rachel was too engrossed in her monologue. ‘Big girl’s blouse, he is.’ Rachel had a penchant for Hylda Baker’s phraseology. ‘He’s not a husband, him. More of a liability. Oh, I told her, Puddy, time and again, I told her. But would she listen? Did she ever listen? So I had a word with St Jude during mass, well, I’ve tried everybody else, and he’s supposed to be favourite for hopeless cases. If she’d just pack her job in and go back to university – it’s never too late for learning. And that daft barmpot could afford to send her. She could be a lawyer or summat of that nature, summat to keep her occupied. Aye, she’s made her bed, but she doesn’t need to lie in it all the while, does she?’

The cat said nothing and, in that special way known only to cats, it said nothing loudly. Slanted yellow eyes were fixed on Rachel’s face as he purred enormously and performed an impossible twist into a more sensible position.

‘Nay, I’m dafter than you, I am. Talking to a blessed cat! At least you’ve the sense not to try and talk back, eh? She’ll be round to see us tomorrow, our little Katie. With them sad green eyes that make me think it’s all my fault. It weren’t my fault, Puddy, honest.’

She placed her mug on the floor. ‘Then there’s the other matter. I don’t know whether it’ll be the right thing for me, not after what I’ve been through. But he seems nice enough, never makes demands. And it’s a lovely house, Puddy-Tat. Stuck on the back of his shop, it is. I think I shall ask him to tea next week, see how you two get on. Eeh, just think. I’ve never even been out for a drink with him, yet he’s proposed. I mean, we’ve got talking, like, many a time, and I’ve never given it a second think. Then he starts asking me in for a cuppa every time I’m on me way home from work. And that’s all it is, just a cup of tea. Don’t look at me like that, you miserable old cat, there’s been no messing. Only after Peter . . . well, you wonder, don’t you?’

Rachel Murray retreated into her reverie. Married at seventeen to escape a house filled by siblings, she had truly fallen into the fire. Peter had been a gambler, a drinker, a man whose vocabulary did not carry the word ‘forgiveness’. Yet only once had she failed to stand by him, because in her younger days, she had believed loyalty to be a wife’s prime debt. The strain of standing by him had left its mark on herself, probably on Judith – though only to a minor degree – and most particularly on Katherine, who had felt the brunt of her father’s wrath on too many occasions. So, like her mother, young Katie had fled prematurely, retreating from the frying pan and into an inferno that was plainly too hot to handle. Judith hadn’t needed to run; Judith, who was Peter’s double except for round the nose, had never been chastised, had been possessed anyway of an otherworldliness into which she could somehow escape from reality.