Queen of the Mersey (41 page)

She remembered that the garrulous Mrs Jones had a son who’d joined the Merchant Navy, but couldn’t recall having seen him. ‘Why didn’t you mention it before?’

‘Didn’t think you’d be interested.’ He shrugged and the shadow of a smile crossed his rather grim face. ‘I understand you got rid of Carl Merton, did the world a favour.’

‘I did no such thing,’ she said hotly. ‘He fell, on top of me, as it happens. My arm was broken.’

‘Seems as if he did you a favour. Your arm looks much better than it did.’ He reached in his breast pocket for a packet of cigarettes and held them up questioningly. ‘Mind if I smoke?’

‘No,’ she murmured.

‘You know, the girl Carl raped, she was in the same class as me at school. Her name was Myfanwy and she was never the same again.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

‘So am I. She was a sweet little thing, a bit like you.’

‘Really?’ Queenie felt uncomfortable. He was looking at her thoughtfully and she wondered what was going on in his mind.

‘Nice place Theo’s got here.’ He turned to look at the garden. ‘Still, money isn’t everything, is it? Me, I’d hate to be rich if it meant knowing where I’d be this time next year, next month, come to that. Perhaps I’ll feel differently when I’m old.’

‘Theo’s not old,’ she said defensively.

‘No, of course he isn’t. I didn’t mean it that way.’ She’d like to bet he did, and that the remark was meant for her, not Theo. He thought she was too young to have settled down with a man of fifty-three.

‘I think I’ll go back to bed. I have an awful headache.’

‘It’s the sun,’ Trefor said sympathetically. ‘The terrace is a sun trap and you’re not used to it.’ He reached for her hand to pull her out of the chair, though there was no need to hold it for quite so long. She was super-conscious of how hard his hand felt, how strong, not soft and well-cared for like Theo’s.

‘Is there anything you want, Queenie?’ There was another glimmer of a smile as his eyes fixed on hers. ‘Just say the word and I’m at your service.’

‘There’s nothing, thank you.’ Perhaps it was the sun, the headache, the fact she still felt dizzy, but there seemed to be a double meaning to his words.

She was enormously relieved when she heard a voice bellow, ‘Queenie! Where are you? Do you like fish? We caught a whale, especially for you.’

Peter came on to the terrace, followed by Theo, who looked surprised to see Trefor there. ‘You’re early!’ he said. ‘I wasn’t expecting you till much later.

Stay to lunch, why don’t you? We caught some trout and a few crayfish. Peter’s just given them to Evadne. We’re having the crayfish. I don’t know how long they take to cook.’

‘Thanks, I’d like that.’

Queenie groaned inwardly. She would have preferred Trefor to leave – Peter too.

Kythira, the Island of Love, had too many temptations to offer. For the briefest of seconds, while Trefor Jones had been holding her hand, she had wondered how it would feel to be made love to by a young, virile man.

She told Theo she wasn’t hungry, that she had a headache and needed to lie down.

Everyone had eaten and gone out again – Theo wanted to show Peter over the boat and Trefor went with them – when she got out of bed, found the Aspro, and took them into the sunny kitchen for a glass of water. Her head was thumping madly and she felt sick.

Evadne was there, sitting at the table, smoking a black cigarette, and finishing off the remains of the wine. The dirty dishes were piled on the draining board.

Queenie showed her the tablets and turned on the tap, hoping the woman would understand she wanted a glass. Evadne nodded furiously and took a wineglass from the cupboard. She kicked the chair beside her, indicating Queenie should sit down. Queenie filled the glass and did so. She took two Aspro and smiled weakly at the older woman.

‘It’s hurting,’ she said, tapping her head.

Evadne understood. She twisted her face grotesquely and extended her hands, as if to say, ‘These hurt too.’ Her fingers and wrists were badly swollen.

‘You poor thing,’ Queenie said sympathetically. ‘They look very painful.’ She took two more Aspro from the packet. ‘These might help a bit.’

‘Thank you.’ The Aspro were washed down with the wine.

The two women sat companionably together, smiling at each other from time to time, until Evadne got up and made some strong coffee. After it had been drunk, Queenie helped with the dishes, and when Theo and Peter returned, without Trefor Jones she was relieved to see, her headache had completely gone and she felt fine.

After her encounter with Trefor Jones, Queenie had rather gone off the idea of cruising around the Ionian Islands, added to which, she would much sooner stay in the villa. It made her feel guilty, the preference for land over water when Theo had actually had a boat built especially for her.

Even worse, on Sunday morning, when they were due to leave, she was horribly glad when Theo woke up complaining of stomach pains. ‘It must be that trout,’ he groaned. ‘Do you feel all right, darling?’

‘I’m fine, but I didn’t have trout, did I?’ She hadn’t liked the sad, frantic look in the dead trout’s eyes. She put her hand on his forehead. It was boiling.

‘You’ve got a temperature.’

‘I should let Trefor know we’re not going, but there’s no way of contacting him.’

‘He’ll soon come looking for us if we don’t turn up.’

Not long afterwards, Peter arrived. He wasn’t feeling too hot himself, he confessed. It could only have been the fish. Perhaps his constitution was stronger than Theo’s as he felt able to drive to Chora and give Trefor a message. ‘Then I’ll come back and keep Theo company – we can compare symptoms.

By the way, Queenie, there’s a big market in Potamos on Sundays. Why don’t you go with Evadne? You seem to be getting on extraordinarily well. The Vandos women are an arrogant lot, you’re the first to treat her like a human being. The market would be better than sitting around all day with a couple of sick old men.’

‘Please don’t say that.’

‘What?’ He looked puzzled.

‘That you and Theo are old.’ Back in Liverpool, she rarely thought about the difference between her age and Theo’s, but in Kythira she was being reminded of it constantly.

‘All right, two sick young men.’ Peter gave a halfhearted smile. ‘Young at heart, anyway.’

The vivid covers of the market stalls rippled in the slight wind that blew in from an equally vivid sea. Evadne was proudly linking her arm, introducing her to everyone she knew. She’d lost track of the number of hands she had shaken.

Everyone seemed very friendly.

Lots of stalls were selling oversized fruit and vegetables, a selection of which Evadne bought. Queenie was tempted to buy loads of flowers, but they would be awkward to carry with the other woman hanging on to her arm – not that she minded. She did however pause for ages at a stall selling silver jewellery set with semi-precious stones; turquoise, amber, jade, pink quartz. Everything was terribly cheap. It dawned on her she hadn’t got a single present to take home.

Within minutes, she had purchased rings with adjustable bands for all the women she knew, including the five members of the War Widows’ Club; a long amber bead necklace for Vera, bracelets for Hester and Mary, a tiepin for Roddy, another for Theo with a large milky stone she didn’t recognise, but was suitably showy for his taste, and an amethyst pendant, earring and bracelet set for herself.

Laura wasn’t mad on jewellery and she’d get her something else, a handbag, for instance. As an afterthought, she bought a tiepin for Duncan too. It would be unkind to leave him out.

A few stalls along was one selling clothes, all hand-knitted in a complicated cable pattern, and she got an oatmeal-coloured jumper with a polo neck for Peter, and an extra-long, beautifully warm black cardigan for Evadne, with capacious pockets in which to keep her swollen hands. Both presents she would keep until the day she and Theo left.

‘I love buying things for people,’ she enthused. Evadne replied in the inevitable Greek.

A few days later, just when Theo was beginning to feel better, the weather changed. The temperature plummeted and it started to rain. Once again, Queenie felt horribly glad. A cruise in the pouring rain wasn’t exactly an alluring proposition, Theo decided. They stayed in the villa and Evadne lit fires in the grates. Queenie had brought with her Gone With the Wind, which she had been meaning to read for ages. She felt luxuriously lazy, reading by firelight, a glass of wine in her hand, while Theo slept in the chair.

After a few days of this, she had a longing to return to Liverpool, for the holiday to be just a memory. She yearned for her office, the hustle and bustle of Freddy’s, particularly at Christmas. In January, she would jet off to Paris for Fashion Week. She couldn’t wait for everything to be normal again.

Home at last, late on Thursday night, Freddy’s closed, ghostly and silent, the apartment looking excessively gloomy, as well as feeling as cold as the North Pole. Someone had forgotten to turn on the central heating, which made Theo extremely cross. If such a simple task had not been done, what else, possibly far more important, had been neglected?

It was too late to go out for a meal. Queenie raided the fridge in the restaurant, returning with two meat pies and half a gateau. She heated up the pies in the hardly-used kitchen and made a pot of coffee, thinking Peter wouldn’t have been enamoured with such a paltry meal.

They ate in front of the television, which she turned on so loud in an effort to relieve the gloom, that Theo complained his ears were in danger of bursting.

‘I’m sorry, I’m missing Kythira,’ she confessed. She was being very perverse.

This time yesterday, she could hardly wait to get home. Still, the feeling would fade in a few days. There was something else, though, that would take longer than a few days to forget, and that was her betrayal of Theo, if only in her mind; wanting him to be more like Peter, wondering how it would be making love with Trefor Jones.

She looked at him now, Theo, hunched in the chair, his face grey with tiredness.

He was the only man she’d made love with and she’d never wanted anyone else. But now she had a feeling she was missing out on something and it wasn’t just Kythira.

But Queenie had thrown in her lot with Theo who had always been, always would be, the person closest to her heart – and with Theo she would stay.

Chapter 14

She spent the four-hour train journey in the lavvy, retching as loud as she could when the ticket inspector knocked on the door. ‘There’s someone sick in here,’ she croaked, and the man went away. She only had a few coppers in her purse, not nearly enough to buy a ticket.

It was well after midnight when the train puffed into Lime Street station, too late to catch a tram to Bootle, so she sat the night out on a bench in the waiting room, hardly sleeping a wink. It didn’t seem fair, Agnes Tate thought piteously, on a woman of fifty-five who’d led such a dead hard life.

At about six o’clock, the station started to come to life. She went to the ladies, badly needing to pee. A woman was just coming out of one of the lavvies and held the door open, so she didn’t have to put one of her precious pennies in the slot. She emerged, feeling better, but a glance at her reflection in the mirror only made her feel worse.

God! She looked a sight. It was ages since she’d been able to afford a bottle of peroxide for her hair. The roots were grey at the front, brown at the back, the ends a horrible orange, brittle and as dry as dust. Her imitation leopard skin coat looked as old as the hills, the collar filthy, the pockets hanging off. As she renewed her lippy, she wondered if it was time to change the colour. Purple lips and orange hair didn’t exactly go together. She rubbed off the smudge of mascara underneath her eyes, added more rouge to her sunken cheeks, patted her hair, and made her way out of the station. She passed the restaurant, just opening for the day, and was reminded that she’d kill for a cuppa.

Where the hell did you go to catch the tram to Bootle? She hadn’t a clue, couldn’t even remember the number, but knew they started from the Pier Head.

She’d just have to walk that far, get on a tram there, easier said than done in her flimsy, too-tight shoes, quite unsuitable for wearing on such an icy December day. She needed wide-fitting shoes because her feet had spread, not surprising considering all the standing around she’d done.

It was all Derek Norris’s fault. He’d turned out to be nothing but a bloody liar, no more fond of her than she was of him. All he’d wanted was a meal ticket. Agnes hadn’t been in London five minutes before she’d found herself on the game.

It had happened quickly, but quite subtly. ‘Show this chap a good time, and I’ll be grateful for the rest of me life,’ Derek had said. ‘His name’s Ozzie and he’s a friend of mine who can throw a bit of business my way, like.’ They’d only been there a few days. So far, she hadn’t seen the Strand, like he’d promised, and there’d been no sign of the mink coat, a coat of any sort, come to that, though he’d bought her a smart white blouse to wear with her black skirt, and little imitation pearl earrings and necklace to match. They looked quite classy on.

They were staying at a mean hotel in Islington, more like a lodging house than anything, sharing the same room, the same bed yet, somewhat surprisingly, he hadn’t touched her. Well, not in the way she’d been expecting.

They’d been out a few times, always to the same pub, the Leather Bottle – off Liverpool Road, as it happened. It was a funny place, not exactly top drawer, but the clientele, men and women alike, were quite well-dressed and she didn’t feel out of place. It wasn’t long before she realised the women were prostitutes and the men on the look-out for a shag.

She’d thought she was doing Derek a favour, sleeping with Ozzie – it wasn’t as if she hadn’t done the same thing before. Next day, Derek had given her twenty-five bob, as much as she’d earned in a whole week in the Black Horse, which had been much harder work.

That afternoon, in the same pub, he’d approached her with another ‘friend’.

Agnes had obliged a second time and had been in receipt of a further twenty-five bob. With it came the suspicion that Derek hadn’t brought her to London to give her a good time, but to line his pockets at her expense. She wasn’t even faintly disillusioned. It only confirmed her belief that men were all the same. He hadn’t let her down because she hadn’t trusted him in the first place. She contemplated leaving, finding a job as a barmaid, but after a quick calculation – two shags a day, seven days a week, equalled eight pounds, seventeen and sixpence, an unbelievable sum – it seemed madness to slog herself to death behind a bar for less than half as much. She didn’t mind Derek creaming a bit off the top for himself. He saved her the trouble of flaunting herself around, trying to pick up customers on her own, and he usually made sure she had a few drinks down her first.