Nest of Sorrows (41 page)

The handkerchief was now a twisted ball in Chris’s hands. ‘If Santosh ever found out. What if Geoff tells him? What if . . . ?’

‘Rubbish! What if the moon’s green cheese? He hasn’t the guts. Geoff would never admit anything that might get him into trouble. Go home and marry your Indian prince.’ Kate nodded. Yes, it would probably work too. It seemed, on the face of it, a strange liaison, this joining of Catholic and Hindu. But marriage, thought Kate, came down to personalities. Santosh and Chris were both good, caring and generous people. They deserved each other. Santosh would have a loving wife and a good home for his son; Chris would be gaining a devoted and loyal husband. Differences in creed and origin were somehow made small simply because Christine herself seemed to barely question them. Ah well, it was time the poor girl had some happiness.

Chris rubbed her eyes and gazed around the room. ‘Whose are those?’ She pointed to a pair of man’s slippers near the hearth.

Kate hesitated. ‘They’re Steve’s,’ she replied eventually.

‘Oh.’

‘I live with him, but we do not co-habit. Steve has . . . his own arrangements. There’s no room in my life for a man.’

‘I see. Don’t you miss the . . . you know . . . the loving?’

‘Sometimes.’ Kate sniffed. ‘But I don’t miss Geoff, except in the way I might miss a headache after a dose of aspirin. Stay away from him, Chris. The man can be poison. He will undermine you until you forget who you are. He needs to do that in order to make himself feel good.’

Chris breathed a deep, shuddering sigh. ‘I wish I was clever like you, Kate. I wish I could work people out and know why they do things. But I can’t. I just felt so lonely and Geoff took that away—he made me feel wanted again.’

Kate shivered visibly. ‘Chris, listen to me. He uses prostitutes, abroad, particularly when he’s in Amsterdam. He once brought a souvenir back with him and we both had to be treated for crab lice.’

The small woman’s face paled. ‘What are they?’

‘A sort of bug that gets transmitted in pubic hair. He picked up filth from a whore and passed it on to me. Oh, I forgave him. I pretended to believe that he’d slept between unclean sheets. You see, I was pregnant with Melanie at the time and still under his thumb. But I have never forgotten the crab lice. If you ever feel tempted by Geoff again, remember what he is. A dirty old man. He has been a dirty old man since he stopped being a dirty young man.’

‘Oh! Oh!’ Chris pressed a hand to her mouth.

‘Get married. Stay away from him. Understand?’

The grey face remained still and waxen.

‘I’m not telling you any of this out of malice, love. It isn’t something I broadcast widely. If you were not such a good person, then I probably would have left you to get on with it. But don’t ruin your chances of marriage. Derek was a kind man, one that suited you, Santosh is the same. He will be devoted and kind and he will never be unfaithful to you. If you were to marry Geoff, you would never know where he had been or whose bed he had come from. His mother made him like that, Chris. She laid herself down as a doormat and he’s been walking over women ever since. A user of women is always a bad man. Please don’t think of him. Please?’

Christine’s head seemed to jerk as she tried to nod and shake at the same time. ‘But . . . he’s always so clean, so careful with his clothes and all that. You’d never think, would you?’

‘He’s obsessive. Many obsessives are sexually depraved.’

‘I feel dirty! I want to go home and have a hot bath. I’m going . . . I’m going to be sick . . .’ She ran from the room and Kate followed her, pushing her towards the bathroom. After she had emptied her stomach into the toilet, Chris sank to the floor, her legs obviously too weak to hold her. ‘Oh God,’ she moaned, ‘what have I done?’

‘You’ve been sick. There’s no crime in that.’ Kate mopped the feverish brow with a damp flannel. ‘And the thing that made you sick was knowing your mistake. There’s no law against making mistakes either. So you just sit there till you feel better. If you start heaving again, at least you’ve only to lean over the bowl.’

Chris glanced around the small pink bathroom. ‘Does your lodger play with a duck in the bath? And a plastic alligator?’

Kate made no reply.

The woman on the floor raised a weak hand. ‘And those pyjamas on the radiator, is he a dwarf?’

‘No.’

‘Oh Kate!’

‘What?’

‘I’m going to be sick again.’

‘Then get on with it.’

She got on with it. Kate, standing by helplessly, didn’t know what to say or do next. There was a child in the house; evidence of that child was in almost every room, because Michael, ever since he had learned to walk, had become something of a voyager. It was a family joke that Michael would turn out to be either a gypsy or a travelling salesman.

Chris sluiced her face at the washbasin, then groped for a towel on a nearby rail. Slowly, while patting her face dry, she turned to look at Kate. ‘You never had that abortion, did you?’

‘No. No, I didn’t.’

‘Don’t you believe in it? Is that why?’

‘I don’t believe in it for me, but I wouldn’t care to judge anyone else who took that option.’

‘Oh.’ Chris’s round features began to clear as strength and understanding arrived simultaneously. ‘You were brave, Kate. With the sugar and everything . . .’

‘It didn’t feel brave, it felt foolish. I might have put him through the pain of birth just for him to die. But it was OK, I had a Caesarean, so he didn’t feel a thing.’

‘And you?’

Kate shrugged lightly. ‘He could easily have finished up motherless. They were hard days.’

‘And all alone too. Why? Why didn’t you tell anyone? We all thought you’d moved away to a job in Manchester . . .’ She suddenly began to nod rhythmically, putting Kate in mind of a Victorian mechanical doll she’d seen years ago, smooth-faced, dark-haired and nodding. ‘You did all this to keep your baby away from Geoff, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Why though? Is Geoff so bad?’

Kate folded her arms. ‘He isn’t exactly bad, but he’s not strong enough to be a father. He’s a weak man.’

‘But . . . the baby’s his too! What did you have, by the way?’

‘A boy. Which is why I never went back. Though I would probably have kept my baby away no matter what its sex. Geoff and Dora have no idea with children. I didn’t want Dora spoiling another child of mine. And I ran for my sanity.’

‘Yes.’ The dark head was bowed in deep thought now. ‘I remember you telling me that. I remember you saying that if you stayed you’d likely finish up in a mental ward. But oh, Kate, what if he ever finds out?’

‘About Michael?’

‘What a lovely name! Yes, about Michael. You know how he always wanted a son. Does Melanie realize that she has a brother?’

‘Oh yes.’

‘And she’s never told?’

Kate smiled broadly. ‘Melanie is my daughter. Soon, he will lose her too, because Mel will not suffer fools. The trappings still attract her, of course. Horses, nice house, good clothes. But once she tries to grow up – really grow up – then Dora and Geoff will stand in her way. If I know my daughter, she’ll drive through them like a bulldozer. Mel doesn’t have a gentle touch, I’m afraid.’

Chris stood up and touched Kate’s arm. ‘He won’t find out from me, you know. But he’ll find out, he’s bound to. Isn’t he?’

The taller woman’s chin jutted forward. ‘Let him. Just let him try to get his hands on my son.’

Chris’s grip tightened. ‘He’s his son too, love. You can’t get away from that – ever. I don’t know much about courts and suchlike, but won’t Geoff have a claim?’

‘Yes.’ The tone was quiet, rather too controlled. ‘But to implement it, he’ll have to get past me. And I intend to use every weapon, clean or dirty, to keep my boy away from his inadequate father.’

‘You wouldn’t . . . you wouldn’t hurt Geoff? I mean . . . you know . . . go for him?’

‘I might. There’s no telling what a mother might do to save her child from the vultures.’

‘You’ll get in trouble, Kate.’

Kate looked sorrowfully at her little friend. ‘I’ve been in trouble for years. I’m used to it.’

Maria Murphy died in the night just before the Christmas holidays. Kate, who still remembered clearly the death of Steve’s sister, simply went to pieces. She found herself weeping copiously in the headmaster’s office. Mr Healey blinked back his own tears before pushing a small glass under her nose. ‘Take a sip of brandy,’ he said gently. ‘It’ll do no harm if it does no good.’

‘She was . . . she was fine. She locked me in the store room again last week and ran off with the key. It took Diane and Yvonne ten minutes to get the key from her . . .’

‘She was a very sick little girl.’

Kate smiled in spite of everything. ‘Little’ was hardly the word for Maria who, at eighteen years of age, had weighed several stones over the odds. ‘I thought she’d make it,’ she whispered. ‘She could move about, walk and so on. I never thought she’d go with pneumonia.’

‘Her heart was weak, love. That’s the trouble with a severe Downs, you never know the day.’

‘And her parents are devastated.’

‘Yes. They realized it was on the cards, always a possibility, but even so . . .’

Kate rose unsteadily to her feet. ‘I don’t think I can do this job, Mr Healey. I can’t take the heartbreak. With the other so-called normal kids, I . . . usually . . . managed not to become attached. But Maria? Dear God, we could never find a pencil or a paintbrush! Who’s going to hide my stuff now, Mr Healey?’

He shook his grey head. ‘I don’t know. Now, get home this minute . . .’

‘But I’ve the physiotherapist coming! And Helen’s going to be measured for her hoist! And I haven’t finished my requisition forms . . .’

‘Mrs Saunders!’

‘Yes?’

‘Don’t you have the two finest nursery nurses in the world? Aren’t they capable of seeing to measurements and physiotherapy?’

‘Yes but . . .’

‘And what am I here for? Decoration? I can take care of the unit for one day, can’t I? Do I have your permission?’

‘OK. You win, I’ll go home.’

As she drove the short distance from Kirkby to Crosby, Kate thought intensely about Maria Murphy’s family. Good and caring people, they were. Imperfect, but good. She stopped at the traffic lights on Moor Lane. Their daughter’s death would cut them to the quick, however well-prepared they might have been. Maria had been special in more ways than one. So, given the brevity of some lives, given the imperfection of parents in general, who was she in particular to act like God?

And suddenly, the taking away of Michael became, in her mind, a terrible and unforgivable crime. Geoff was a weak man, just as she was a weak woman. How could she judge him unfit to rear a son? More to the point, how could she judge herself as capable?

The car behind her hooted impatiently and she crawled through a light that had probably been green for ages. Like a snail, she crept round Crosby, finally parking on the front at Blundellsands, where silence reigned. This was the truly posh end of the villages, a village on its own, the sort of area where people got upset if ‘Great Crosby’ should be mistakenly written on envelopes addressed to them. This was Blundellsands! This was reputed to be the site where Blondell had landed with his Norsemen, and the name was probably a corruption of Blondell’s Lands.

The river stretched away towards the open sea and Ireland. Below her, on the shore, a few sea-birds pecked about in dirty sand. To her left, she could glimpse a few of the dock cranes, while Wales with its pretty hills was obliterated just now by mist. On a good day, Wales was truly visible from here, as was New Brighton with its domed pavilion. But today there was just the river, grey, oil-streaked and leaden in its movements.

She folded her hands on the steering wheel, resting a throbbing head against the cushion of her arms. Maria. Michael. It might so easily have been Michael. He’d had no decent start in life; premature, a diabetic mum who had been living at the time in conditions far from perfect. And yet she had hidden herself, hidden him, taken him away from what was rightfully his. Didn’t Michael have rights too? Who the hell was she to deny him a father?

Then there was Steve, that other added complication. Since Mark’s disappearance, Steve had apparently remained celibate. And while poor Michael probably thought of Steve as a father, Kate . . . Oh God, no. She didn’t love him! How many times a day did she tell herself just that? Her affection for Steve was invested in the fact that he posed no threat. Wasn’t it? For Steve, she was just another person, a human being he valued and respected, someone he cared about. There was nothing, NOTHING! She found herself sobbing this word, wetting her hands with tears.

You will pull yourself together, Kate Saunders. Maria has died; you will show respect and go to the funeral. And you will wipe Steve Collins out of your mind this minute. He is not for you; he is not for any woman. Then, you will look at your child, really look at him. You have made your stand. Perhaps it is time for you to return, tail between legs, ‘sorry, Geoff, sorry, Dora.’

She raised her head slowly and gazed across the estuary. A ship was coming in, a big and beautiful white ship from some faraway place. On the docks, they would be ready to receive her, those big burly Scouse dockers with accents as thick as treacle, hands like shovels, hearts as gentle as Larry the Lamb. But it wasn’t her ship coming home. She knew that clearly enough. Perhaps hers had been lost at sea.

It was her turn this week for both car and cooking. This had seemed a sensible enough arrangement to both Kate and Steve; whoever got the car did the choosing, shopping and cooking, while the other got picked up from school, catered for; then the cateree (as Steve called the recipient of such services) took charge of washing up and child-minding. Not that this situation needed to last much longer, mused Kate as she drove through Crosby. She had enough money from Boothroyd for her own car, even for her own house. She picked him up at three-thirty, her face still red from weeping at the Blundell-sands front.

‘What the hell’s up with you?’ he asked. ‘You’ve not bent my car, have you?’