Lizzie, continuing to look at Mary Ann, sighed deeply but said nothing. She remembered Corny Boyle and her memory made her shudder slightly. If ever a child went to the extreme to gather her friends it was her daughter. Corny Boyle on one hand and Beatrice Willoughby on the other. The poles were nearer than these two. She did not ask Mary Ann how long she spent in the company of Corny Boyle; she only had to use her imagination. Mary Ann had learned ‘He stands at the corner’ from him. But there was another matter Lizzie had to attend to at the moment, and its importance outweighed the doings of Mary Ann, and so she said to her, ‘Go on upstairs now and get your things for this afternoon. I’ve ironed the ribbon to slot through your frock; leave the ends loose and I’ll do the bow.’
Mary Ann looked hard at her mother for a moment. It was only eleven o’clock; she wasn’t due at the party until four. As for slotting the ribbon through her frock, she wasn’t going to put that one on; she was going to wear her nylon, her blue nylon. There was something up and her mother wanted rid of her.
She did not waste her still indignant glance on any other member of the family, but walked out of the room and up the stairs. And she was quick to notice that no voices reached her from the kitchen until she was across the landing, and then it was her mother’s voice she heard and it brought Mary Ann to a stop. It also brought her head on one side and caused her ear to cock itself upwards, and what she heard her mother say was, ‘You might as well know. It wasn’t about her and the song that he was mad. He didn’t like it, naturally, and he came in here and told me so, but it needs very little thought to realise that neither her nor the song had anything to do with him coming back unexpectedly like this.’
‘You know what brought him?’
It was her father’s voice, and now Mary Ann, retracing a number of her steps, was back at the head of the stairs when her mother’s voice came again, saying, ‘I’ve a good idea.’ There followed a pause before Lizzie’s voice, softer now and speaking to Tony, asked, ‘Have you been going out with Lorna Johnson, Tony?’
Mary Ann’s mouth dropped into a gape.
‘Good God!’ That was Tony saying that. He said it again. ‘Good God! How could he know about that?’
‘Aw, lad, don’t tell me you’ve been so daft.’ This was her father’s voice, and it was unusually quiet and sort of sad, and Tony answered sharply, ‘It was all so simple, it only happened the once. I was going into the cinema, there was a queue and I had to wait, and Lorna was standing not a yard from me. What could I do, pretend I didn’t know her?’
‘Did you come home together?’
‘Yes.’ Another pause. ‘After we’d had supper. What was wrong in that? But it’s as I thought, and I’ve had the idea for a long time, he’s been having me watched…By damn! I won’t stand for it. Oh no! I’m not standing for that.’
‘Hold your hand a minute.’ Her da’s voice was lower still now. ‘Don’t jump to conclusions. He could have heard about it by accident.’
‘What! In Naples?’
‘Yes…well, you’ve got something there. But don’t be rash. And I maintain what I said a minute ago. You were a fool to take her out, and to make it a supper an’ all.’
‘I couldn’t get out of it, Mike; the situation was impossible. I see her every day.’
‘You mean she sees you every day.’ This was Michael speaking with unusual audacity, and he was promptly silenced by Mike saying, ‘That’s enough, quite enough.’
‘Was it just that once, or are you seeing her again?’
Her da, Mary Ann realised, was talking as if he were Tony’s da an’ all, and when, after a short silence, Tony’s voice came to her saying, ‘Oh, what of it? I’ve made a date, but there’s nothing in it,’ her da said, ‘You’re mad.’
‘All right, I may be, but I swear that if he keeps on I’ll go the whole hog, I will. I’ve stood his iron hand for as long as I can, but this is a bit too much…spying on me, setting someone to spy on me. I’m going to have it out with him right away.’
She heard the scuffling of feet and her father’s voice fading away, saying, ‘Here, hold on a minute. Steady up. Let’s talk this over.’
Her hand across her mouth, Mary Ann went softly into her room and closed the door. Tony had taken Lorna Johnson to the pictures, and not only to the pictures but out to supper. A cloud had passed over the sun. Tony had taken Lorna Johnson to the pictures. Tony was her property; he had always been hers. Always…all her life. Tony was her…her lad. He had said so himself, a long, long time ago.
She found that her face was twitching and she wanted to cry. But she mustn’t cry, for her ma would want to know why. And then there was the party this afternoon. Bust the party; she didn’t want to go to the party. Tony had taken Lorna Johnson to the pictures. She hated Tony…yes, she did. She hoped Mr Lord would go for him. Oh no, she didn’t, she didn’t. She didn’t want them to fight because Tony might lose his temper and go away. She could never hate Tony, but she hated Lorna Johnson. Oh yes, she hated Lorna Johnson. She hated all the Johnsons. Oh, she wished…she wished that they would die, all of them, especially Lorna. She went to the window and stood looking across the farm buildings in the direction of the two cottages, one of which was the home of the Johnsons.
A picture now filled the whole space of the farmyard. It was of a table. At one side sat Tony and at the other Lorna Johnson. She could see Lorna’s high pencil-slim heels and short skirt. She could see her sheer nyloned knees. Her eyes travelled upwards over Lorna’s close-fitting suit to her bold, dark eyes and black hair. She saw Tony looking at her across the table. Tony had that clean, washed look that was peculiar to him, and he was wearing his grey suit, the new one that he had bought last month and looked smart in. She saw him handing Lorna Johnson a plate, and on the plate were fish and chips. She watched Lorna nibbling at the fish and then…a wave of triumph passed through Mary Ann’s slight body when she observed the smartly clad Lorna Johnson rolling on the unsubstantial ground in agony…She had been poisoned and she would die and it served her right.
Chapter Two: ‘Good Afternoon, Mrs Willoughby’
‘Now mind your manners,’ said Lizzie, as she buttoned the coat carefully over Mary Ann’s blue nylon dress. ‘Say, “Good afternoon, Mrs Willoughby”, and when you are leaving don’t forget to say, “Thank you very much for having me, Mrs Willoughby. I’ve enjoyed it so much”. And don’t forget to say, “Mrs Willoughby”; it’s always nicer when you say the person’s name. Do you hear?’ She gave her daughter a slight shake.
‘Yes…yes, ma.’
‘What’s the matter with you? Don’t you want to go to the party?’
‘Yes…yes, ma.’
In some bewilderment Lizzie looked down on Mary Ann. Then, giving her a slight push, she said, ‘Go on then, there’s Tony waiting for you. And mind what I’ve told you and behave yourself.’
Mary Ann made no rejoinder to this. She walked sedately down the path, through the gate and onto the road where Tony was in the act of turning the car round. And when she was seated next to him she gave him no welcoming ‘Hallo’ as was usual. Nor did he speak to her. He looked mad, in a temper. He had likely got it in the neck from Mr Lord, and serve him right. Yet again she thought that it wasn’t him she really wanted to get it in the neck, it was Lorna Johnson.
It wasn’t until they were actually entering Newcastle that he spoke to her.
‘What’s the name of the street again you’re going to?’
She turned to him and said coolly, ‘It isn’t a street, it’s a drive…The Drive, Gosforth. Me ma told you. Number fifty-eight.’ And then she added, in a further dignified effort to point out the difference between a street and a drive, ‘It’s a lovely drive, and a lovely house, beautiful, and they call it Walney Lodge. And Beatrice’s father is a superintendent of ships, and her mother launches them.’ She gave a little jerk to her head to add to this impressive statement, and for a flashing second Tony’s eyes rested upon her, and there was a semblance of a smile o
n his face, but all the response she got out of him was, ‘My, my!’ and she didn’t like the tone in which he said that.
When they finally reached Fifty-eight, The Drive, Mary Ann was quick to notice that, while she was gushingly welcomed by her best friend Beatrice, Mrs Willoughby and Tony were talking in the same kind of voices, high up in the head, sort of swanky. So it was with some bewilderment that Mary Ann received her hostess’s welcome of ‘Hallo, Mary Ann’. According to orders she answered, ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Willoughby’, and in her best voice which, no matter how hard she tried, would not come out of the top of her head.
When she entered the hall hand in hand with Beatrice she recognised immediately the nice smell that had attacked her nostrils on her previous and first visit. It was a lovely smell and was all over the house. Not that—she now defended the smells of her own home—not that their house didn’t smell nice, but theirs had a different smell, a bready smell, things-out-of-the-oven smell. This smell was scented, like flowers. Perhaps the smell was from flowers, for there, in front of the huge electric fire that Beatrice said burned imitation logs, there was heaped a wonderful array of flowers. They all sprang out of a low dish on the hearth. It was like a shallow baking bowl, not like the vases her ma put flowers in and stood on the window sill.
She went up the beautiful staircase that had a wrought-iron balcony at the top through which you could look down into the hall below, but her mind was lifted from the beauty and unusualness of the house by her name being cried, and she turned round to see coming across the landing Janice Schofield, her other best friend.
‘Oh, Mary Ann, isn’t it lovely?’
Mary Ann did not know exactly to what Janice was referring, whether it was the house, or the party, or the meeting with herself after the long separation of a whole day, but she nodded brightly, and in the admiring and superior company of her two best friends she forgot for a moment about Tony and his cruel desertion. She was at the party and, oh, she was going to have a lovely time.
And Mary Ann did have a lovely time, for of all the fifteen guests she found herself prominently to the fore. Only one thing disappointed her: they did not have the television on. Between games and tea, and then more games and ice-cream, she glanced longingly towards the big white square eye of the world that stood on its pedestal in the corner of the large drawing room. At one period towards the end of the wonderful party a fellow guest, a boy and another apparent television-yearning soul, suggested that they should switch on and see ‘Bronco Layne’. Mary Ann seconded this by joining her hands under her chin and exclaiming, ‘Yes! Oh yes!’ but the young hostess squashed the plea immediately. Yet turned her refusal into a compliment by saying, ‘Oh no, we don’t want the silly television. You do one of your funny rhymes, Mary Ann.’
‘What! Me?’
‘Yes, go on.’
Mary Ann looked round now at the momentarily silent company and just for the smallest accountable fraction that one could measure in a second she felt shy. It was one thing to entertain her friends behind Sister Catherine’s back and make them giggle by leaning towards them and whispering such things as ‘Isn’t it a pity that skitty Kitty can’t be really witty.’ This was considered excruciatingly funny because Sister Catherine’s weakness was sarcasm. But it was quite another thing to…do some poetry…before a company.
‘Do about the bluebottle,’ cried Janice. ‘Go on, Mary Ann, do about the bluebottle.’
‘Yes, do.’ Beatrice turned to where a smart young woman was leaning over the head of the couch watching the proceedings and cried, ‘She makes them up, Aunt Connie. Oh, they’re funny.’
‘Come on, Mary Ann, do the bluebottle.’
So Mary Ann, standing with her back towards another arrangement of flowers that entirely covered the drawing-room fireplace, did the bluebottle. With a twinkle in her eye she began:
‘He said it was a bluebottle,
I said it was a fly.
He said it was a bluebottle,
And then I asked him why.
Just ’cos, he said,
Just ’cos that’s all.
Wasn’t any answer,
Was it,
At all?’
The amusement came from the way Mary Ann delivered this more than from the words themselves, and there was much laughter and cries for more.
‘Now do “The Spuggy”.’
The slang term for a sparrow did not sound uncouth when coming from Beatrice’s lips, but Mary Ann was apparently not quite happy at the suggestion she should do ‘The Spuggy’—‘The Bloomin’ Spuggy’, to be correct. And, anyway, it wasn’t one of her own. But the requests heaping on one another, she once again stood with her back to the flowers and began, in a north-country accent you could have cut with a knife, ‘The Bloomin’ Spuggy’.
‘There was a bloomin’ spuggy
Went up a bloomin’ spout,
And then the bloomin’ rain came doon
And washed the bloomin’ spuggy oot.
Up came the bloomin’ sun
And dried up the bloomin’ rain,
And then the bloomin’ spuggy
Wentupthebloominspoutagain.’
This effort was greeted enthusiastically and with much laughter, especially by the young males of the party, and when Beatrice, basking in the limelight of her dear friend Mary Ann, cried, ‘Now do…’ she was abruptly cut off by her mother’s polite tones, saying, ‘No more, dear, now; the time’s getting on. You’ve just time for one more game. Now what is it going to be?’
There were a lot of ‘ahs’ and ‘ohs’, and then it was decided the wonderful party would finish with hide-and-seek.
The choice seemed rather a young one for these ten-to-twelve-year-olds and Mrs Willoughby raised her eyebrows to her cousin, the smart young woman, who was still leaning over the head of the couch.
Mary Ann, now very excited by her triumph, was determined to find some place to hide where she would never be found—well, not for a long time, anyway, she wanted this party to go on forever. The majority of the guests were scampering on tiptoe through the hall and up the stairs, but Mary Ann made for the kitchen. It was a big kitchen; she had noticed this when she had helped to carry some of the plates from the dining room. It was surrounded by tall cupboards, and one was a broom cupboard. It was the last cupboard, nearest to the back door. She knew this because she had seen Mrs Willoughby opening it to get a cloth because somebody had spilt jelly on the floor.
The kitchen was empty and within seconds she had inserted her slight figure into a space between the standing and hanging brushes, and there she stood shivering with excitement, hoping and praying that this would be the last place that Beatrice, who was the seeker, would look for her.
When she heard the footsteps coming into the kitchen she bit on her lip and hunched her shoulders up over her neck. It was Mrs Willoughby who had come into the kitchen and she was talking to Beatrice’s Aunt Connie. She could hear the voices just as easily as if she was standing by their sides. Mrs Willoughby was saying in her high, swanky voice, ‘Hide-and-seek. It’s a cover-up for Sardines, I suppose. Were we ever as goofy over boys as they are? I suppose we were, but it’s really embarrassing to watch at times. Well, it’s nearly over and thank goodness.’
‘I don’t know how you stand it, Jane. They’ve left the house in a frightful mess.’
‘Oh, that will soon be cleared up, but I’ll leave most of it until Mrs Stace comes in in the morning. She’s very good like that after a party, she doesn’t mind coming in on the Sunday.’
‘What did you think about…“The Spuggy”?’
‘Oh yes.’ There came a little laugh. ‘I was dreading what she would follow up with.’
‘She’s a quaint little thing, isn’t she?’
‘My dear, Beatrice adores her.’ There was another laugh. ‘She’s got a pash on her, as has Janice. I think it’s because they’re such opposites. You couldn’t find two more opposite than Beatrice and her, now could you?…or Janice.’
‘No, I suppose not, but she’s rather taking, I think.’
‘Oh yes, I grant you that, but there was a time when the sound of her name could make me scream. When she first came to the convent three years ago I got Mary Ann Shaughnessy for breakfast, dinner and tea.’
‘What did you say her name was?’
‘Shaughnessy.’
‘Shaughnessy?’
‘Yes. What’s the matter?’
‘Is her father a farmer, or a manager or some such?’
‘Yes, he manages old Lord’s farm. You know Peter Lord, the shipyard man. He’s got a pet hobby of farming, I hear. But what’s the matter, do you know them?’
Mary Ann, standing in her secret place, waited and the smart young woman’s next words brought the thought to her mind that life could go on smoothly for months, even years, and then of a sudden everything happened together. Like today, Mr Lord going for her, then finding out about Tony, and now the woman was saying in a low, pained tone, ‘My dear, it’s that child’s mother that is the cause of Bob and me breaking up.’
‘No, that’s impossible. She must be just an ordinary woman.’
‘Ordinary woman or not, she’s the woman.’
‘You must be dreaming, Connie.’
‘I wish I were.’
‘But I didn’t know it was a woman that had caused the trouble. I thought it was…well…’
‘Well, what?’
‘Oh, I don’t know—the growing pains of marriage, I suppose.’
‘The growing pains of marriage don’t usually cause separation, it’s nearly always another woman, and in my case it’s Elizabeth Shaughnessy.’
‘But how do you know? Wait a minute until I close this door.’
Mary Ann, from within the darkness of the cupboard and the darkness that was now filling her small body, heard the footsteps go towards the kitchen door, and when they returned the smart young woman said, ‘Just by chance, I suppose you would call it, or fate or some such…You remember when I went to open the sale-of-work in Shields last Christmas?’
Love and Mary Ann Page 3
