Nest of Sorrows (37 page)

Father Flynn would shuffle about in his uncomfortable chair. Was Christine Halls ever going to grow up? The supposed anonymity of the confessional was a face, particularly in this case. He would have recognized that whine at a distance of forty paces. ‘I can’t cope with it, Father. I think I’m in love with him . . .’

‘Say five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys.’

‘But what about tomorrow? I’ll go through it all again then.’

‘Pray for strength and forgiveness.’

‘Oh, is that all?’

‘Five Glory Bes.’

So Christine found no help or support during her dreadful days of torment. She went on a diet. The diet consisted of lettuce, fruit and love, because her infatuation more than appeased an appetite that had, until now, been healthy and eager. Each morning, she hid behind net curtains and watched while he drove away to work, her heart almost exploding because she would be separated from him until the evening. So, while her young charges played and caused mayhem, she added to the happy mess by cooking scones, pies and cakes in readiness for her beloved’s return. The scones and cakes were really for Melanie, weren’t they? She asked herself this question frequently as she kneaded and mixed and rolled. It was all about looking after Melanie while Kate was away. The other problem would disappear in time. Wouldn’t it?

But it didn’t. As Chris began to emerge from her chrysalis of fat, Geoff started to notice his next-door neighbour. She wasn’t a bad looker after all. There was a new shine to her hair, and she had started to colour in the prematurely grey bits. Gentle blue eyes looked upon him with obvious devotion, and he found himself flattered by her interest. She was only thirty-three. He preened himself. In spite of a sixteen-year age gap, she still found him attractive.

Melanie was not blind to the situation. ‘Dad,’ she chided one day. ‘How can you allow her to make such a fool of herself? After all, you would never consider such a dumbell, would you?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Christine, next door. She’s after you now that Mum’s gone.’ Melanie was, as usual, blunt to the point of carelessness. ‘You must put her off, tell her to stay away.’

He folded his paper. ‘Why? She’s good company for Mother. Mother has no-one else to talk to.’

Melanie raised her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Dad! She isn’t interested in Granny – or in me. It’s you she comes to see. Every time she looks at you with those sad cow’s eyes, I feel sick.’

‘Cows have brown eyes, I think.’

‘See? You’ve noticed the colour of her eyes. She doesn’t even speak English! How can you encourage a woman who is so . . . so stupid?’

Geoff smiled knowingly. ‘Brains aren’t everything. Not in a woman.’

‘Oh, I see. So it won’t matter if I fail all my O’levels?’

‘I didn’t mean it that way. Chris has . . . other qualities. She can’t help her lack of education, she never had your advantages.’

‘Right.’ Melanie’s mouth was set in a thin determined line. ‘I shall go and live with Mum.’

He grinned. ‘If you can find her. I, of course, am forbidden to look. And she is promising to file for divorce on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown.’

Melanie sniffed loudly. ‘Will she go through with it? Will you let her?’

He shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Can’t stop her, I’m afraid. As my solicitor put it, if one partner decides that the music has stopped, there is no way that the other dancer can continue to tango. No-one can dance alone, Melanie.’

She studied him for a moment or two. ‘OK. Just don’t start waltzing with Matilda next-door. Otherwise, I’ll be off to Crosby . . .’ She stopped, aware that she had blurted out the words carelessly and stupidly. A hand strayed to her mouth. Good heavens! If she could say ‘Crosby’ so easily, how near was she to mentioning Michael?

‘Crosby?’ he snapped.

She hesitated. ‘Somewhere like that. I can’t remember exactly.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘You know where she is, don’t you? Ah yes, even a creature as flighty and thoughtless as your mother couldn’t take off without leaving a contact number for her only child. You had better give it to me.’

The girl staggered back as if she had been struck. ‘No!’

He waved his arms wildly in the air now. ‘What if something happens? God forbid that it should, but suppose you were in an accident? How would I find Kate then? This is ridiculous, Melanie. If you know that blasted woman’s whereabouts . . .’

‘You’d be fined if you followed her.’

His face darkened to an unattractive shade of magenta. ‘I have no intention of following anyone. But, should the need arise . . .’

‘Should the need arise, Dad, then Granny Rachel will find her.’

He shook his head. ‘No. Those two quarrelled, didn’t they? They are not on speaking terms.’

‘It’s been . . . put right.’ Melanie hung her head. She didn’t feel ashamed of the fact that she had sheltered her mother, but there were times when it was almost impossible to bear her father’s pain and petulance. ‘They made it up. Just before Mum went to . . . to . . .’

‘To Crosby. Ah well. If you think so little of your father and so much of your mother, then there is little more to be said.’ He went off to mix his dose of cocktail while Melanie fled to the safety of her room.

Geoff nursed his martini. He did not feel particularly comfortable with himself these days. Somewhere at the back of his mind lurked a vague suspicion that he had been a less than perfect husband. Time was his problem, his enemy. There was too much of it. With Kate gone, the house seemed silent and un-lived in. The silence wove itself around him, providing a cocoon in which he was forced to sit and think about the past. Not that Kate had been noisy. But she had been . . . there. Now he thought about his adulteries, about his mother’s interference, his own weakness. No! He wasn’t weak! It was all her fault, she shouldn’t have gone! There must be a way round this, there really must! Bugger the injunction, he would find the damned woman and drag her back here. Life was dull without her, decidedly colourless. Mother had lost her energy because she had no-one to talk to, Melanie seemed listless at times, while his bed was cold every night.

As Geoff sat and thought about bed, Chris walked in with a pot of plum jam. ‘I . . . er . . . made it myself. Last year.’ She stared at him with an affection she had not the wit to conceal.

He studied her. She was coming on a treat; even the malapropisms were fewer now that she’d started to look after the English of others. She might be useful. Handled correctly, this dumb devotion of hers could well be turned to his advantage. He twisted his glass. ‘I’ve been thinking, Chris. Come here. Come and sit by me.’

Her cheeks flushed pink with girlish pleasure as she took her place beside him on the sofa. ‘Yes, Geoff?’ They were the eyes of a worshipping spaniel, beautiful too, softened by moss green shadow and emphasized with thick black mascara. Yes, this new Christine might prove extremely useful. ‘Do you know where Kate is?’ he asked without further preamble. ‘Not that I have any affection for her, you understand. But I may need to contact her in a case of emergency.’

‘Oh.’ She folded nervous hands. ‘I’ve no idea. Have you asked Melanie?’

‘Sworn to secrecy, I’m afraid. But I do worry, Chris. What would happen if Melanie were ill? I couldn’t contact her mother, could I?’

She swallowed. ‘No. I suppose not.’

He took her hand, noticing how her fingers trembled in his grasp. ‘Find her for me, will you? Please, love?’ A renewed bout of trembling, this time right up her arm and into the shoulder that leaned against his. With a subtle change of tactic, he moved his hand to her upper arm, making sure that the backs of his fingers made contact with an ample breast. His body stirred as he felt the immediate reaction of the nipple. ‘Go to Rachel on the market. See what you can find out.’

Her lips were parted in anticipation. With a slowness that was painful for both of them, he made the journey to her welcoming mouth, kissing her deeply, running his tongue against mint-flavoured teeth. Now she shook like a leaf as he moved expert hands over her upper body.

When he released her, he knew she was his for the taking. Great tears hovered on the edge of blackened lashes, while a hungry mouth whispered, ‘Geoff . . . oh, Geoff.’

He would have to act quickly, Mother would be back from the chiropodist at any second. ‘You will find out for me?’ he asked.

‘What?’ She was obviously in a very heightened state of sexual excitement, too keen for anything but his proximity to be noticed at present.

‘Find out where Melanie’s mother is.’

‘Eh?’ She blinked rapidly. ‘Yes. Oh yes.’

He smiled reassuringly. ‘Lonely?’

‘Yes. Oh yes.’

Geoff checked himself for a second. What was he doing? Did he really want to get lumbered with a woman who breathed ‘yes, oh yes’ every hour of the day? He thought about this. Chris was ripe, big-breasted, strong in instinct. She would probably make an excellent bed-fellow, would be anxious to please and serve in all kinds of ways. Kate had pretended for long enough to be a ‘yes’ woman, the sort he had always wanted. Chris was the real thing! But she lived right next door, it would be silly and dangerous. Yes, and she slept next door. Alone. How easy it would be for him to slip out in the night . . . And she hadn’t the brain to fight back once he tired of her. Strange, he mused briefly, how many women he had had in his time. Yet only one meant anything at all to him, and that particular one was currently unavailable. ‘Do you miss . . . loving?’ he whispered now. ‘Do you miss being touched?’

‘I miss it something awful, Geoff.’

‘Shall I visit you? Later tonight?’

The confessional was a million miles away. The confessional was Fridays and this was only Wednesday. ‘Yes.’ With sudden boldness, she took his hand and placed it on her breast, and he marvelled at the size and weight of her warm ripeness. ‘Come to me,’ she mumbled, and he wondered briefly whether or not she had recently mastered the Mills and Boon school of reading. ‘I shall be ready for you.’ On this note of high drama, she left the room, her walk made drunken by sheer lust.

For Geoff, that night began as pure farce. At midnight, when he felt sure that the rest of the house was at peace, he pulled on his clothes over his pyjamas. Although he had seen this done in films, it was not as easy in real life as it looked on a cinema or television screen. But he didn’t want to startle Chris by stripping off right down to his undies; after all, she was a reserved type for most of the time.

Then, when he finally got himself out of the house, he realized that he had forgotten his keys. This posed a difficult problem. If he were to sneak back in the morning unshaven and unkempt, two pairs of female eyebrows would no doubt be raised, so he set about breaking into his own house. The task was not an easy one. As a security-conscious chap, Geoff had made sure that his fortress was virtually impenetrable, so he found himself squeezing through the small window in his mother’s bathroom. When his legs were hanging over the washbasin, the light was snapped on and his mother’s voice screamed out loud enough to wake the dead, ‘Geoff! We’ve got the burglars!’, after which announcement she set about the business of beating his posterior with the lavatory brush.

Having established the identity of her intruder, Dora wanted full details as to why and where, so Geoff made up a tale about seeing a fox on the lawn and locking himself out by accident. This led to the making and drinking of cocoa, then he was forced to listen while his mother delivered a lecture on insomnia, high blood pressure and the tendency to piles, the latter being caused, of course, by walking about in wet grass after midnight, especially in springtime. His elbow was slipping off the table, and he jerked himself awake as he remembered, with a sudden blinding clarity, that Chris had a key to his house! Of course she did! There had been no need for any of this foolishness.

The whole process was repeated at one in the morning, trousers and jacket over pyjamas, keys in a pocket, out through the front door and over to Christine’s darkened house. He rang the bell. Nothing happened. Perhaps she had had second thoughts. Of course! He had a key to her house just as she had one to his! There followed several long and angry minutes while he tried, in that special darkness known only to the edge of countryside, to find on his ring the implement that would open Christine’s door. Several of his own keys got stuck, and one in particular threatened to snap, so tightly did it fit.

But at last, he was in the house. He shouldn’t have worried about his pyjamas, because Chris was stark naked beneath the sheets, smooth, beautiful and inviting, in spite of the fact that she had caused her mascara to run by crying herself to sleep. A small bedside lamp illuminated her luscious curves as he pulled back the covers.

The rest of the night was a blur of frantic activity. Geoff emerged early the next morning with a headache, a bad back and the sure knowledge that there had been more to Derek than met the eye. A lot more. Geoff coughed a great deal, pleaded flu, then took to his bed for the whole of the day.

Next door, Christine’s batteries were fully recharged. By nine o’clock, the house sparkled and ‘her’ three babies were ensconced in the rear seat of the Morris Minor. She smiled benignly upon the world as she made her way towards Bolton market. Christine Halls was no longer a Catholic. No more choir practices and Legion of Mary for her. Because she had found her new husband, and she marvelled at the fact that he wasn’t even an orphan.

Rachel was selling some strange-looking ornaments that everyone seemed to be going in for these days. Hideous, they were. Each item consisted of a plastic vase-shaped base with twenty or thirty wires sticking out of the top. To these were attached little nodding balls, sometimes all silver, sometimes of one garish colour, occasionally of mixed shades. It was a confusing business. Single colours were seven and six, silver were nine bob. A mixture of colours was still seven and six, but a mixture of silver plus colour(s) was eight shillings. She was fed up with them. As soon as she got one out of its box, it mushroomed outward and bobbed about like a lot of satellites around some invisible moon. The things took up too much space, spoiled the appearance of the stall and sold like hot cakes – which was why Rachel had stocked them in the first place. One woman bought five ‘to put away as presents’ and Rachel shook her head as she watched this particular shopper’s back disappearing in the direction of the fishmarket.