Finishing Touches

by Patricia Scanlan

  Almost from the moment the train slowed to a halt at Lime Street station and Cassie emerged on to the street, she felt positive about her move. A lovely taxi driver with his distinctive Scouse accent unburdened her of her luggage and said, ‘Welcome to Liverpool, luv. Where to?’ This was her first taste of the famed Liverpudlian friendliness and warmth; she knew she had done the right thing and that she was going to like Liverpool. The bank had arranged for her to stay in a guest-house until she found accommodation, so she gave him that address. Friends of hers in London had offered to store her possessions until she got a place of her own. Two weeks later, Cassie had a flat off Chaloner Street opposite the Queen’s Dock, fifteen minutes’ cycle from her office. She had her belongings freighted up by train and once she had arranged them in the flat, she felt more settled.

  She had no idea what Robbie had felt when he arrived in London to discover that she was no longer there. All she knew was that she was glad she had made the move.

  Customer Services was a much more people-orientated job than her previous work with computers, and Cassie enjoyed it. The other people in the office were extremely friendly and helpful and before long she had completely settled in. She became particularly friendly with two of her colleagues, Pauline and Ann, who shared a house in West Kirby on the Wirral peninsula. They invited her out to stay with them one weekend and she thought it was such a scenic place. Their lovely redbrick town house was only minutes from the sea and on the Saturday morning after a scrumptious breakfast the three of them had gone for a long walk down by the sea-front. It was a windy November day but the sun was shining and the skies were blue and as the breeze whipped her hair around her face, Cassie sniffed the fresh salty air appreciatively and thought what a nice place it would be to live. Coming over to West Kirby on the train, she was quite surprised at how rural the peninsula was, once they went under the Mersey tunnel and left the suburbs. It was an eye-opener and the journey had been only half an hour. She began to think about moving out of the city to live on the coast. New Brighton and Wallasey were other picturesque spots that she liked. After Christmas, she decided, she would start looking for accommodation by the sea.

  Pauline and Ann had driven her to Chester that afternoon and Cassie really fell in love with the magnificent old city. This was a place she was going to have fun exploring at the weekends, especially the antique and bric-à-brac shops. That night the girls took her to a restaurant in West Kirby called What’s Cooking and they had a superb meal, which Cassie insisted on paying for. They both had been hospitable to her and had helped her settle in quickly at work.

  Pauline was blonde, bubbly and vivacious, reminding Cassie somewhat of Aileen, while Ann was dark-haired, elegant and had an air of serenity that was in complete contrast to her flatmate. Both of them were in their late twenties like Cassie and, like her, the girls were moving up the career ladder with Allied Isles so they had a lot in common. The atmosphere in the office was jolly and relaxed, in contrast to the rather brisk, efficient air she had been used to in the London office. But then, for customer services, a jolly, relaxed atmosphere was just what was needed!

  The week before she was due to fly home for Christmas Cassie clattered down the steps of the office block with the intention of heading to George Henry Lees, the superb department store that was a landmark in Liverpool and only a few minutes from Lime Street station. She still had a few Christmas presents to buy and she had seen a few nice things there that would suit her purposes admirably. Liverpool was crowded with Christmas shoppers over from Dublin and during the week when she went shopping in her lunch-hour she felt she might as well be at home in Henry Street there were so many familiar accents from all sides. Special shopping trips were organized by the car-ferries and hotels and doing the Christmas shopping in Liverpool was an annual event for a lot of Irish people, and much looked forward to by the shop and hotel owners. Barbara had been terribly disgusted that Cassie had moved from London. Shopping in Liverpool definitely hadn’t the social clout of shopping in the capital. Barbara was not inclined to visit her sister in Liverpool, and Cassie was just as glad.

  As she reached the bottom of the steps, a man stepped in her path and Cassie came to a halt. ‘Hello, Cassie,’ a familiar, heart-stopping voice said, and Cassie got the shock of her life as she stared up at Robbie.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she gasped, stunned.

  ‘I came to see you,’ Robbie smiled down at her. ‘You shouldn’t have left London and run away. Surely you don’t hate me that much.’

  ‘I didn’t run away!’ Cassie retorted, stung by his accusation. ‘And I don’t hate you,’ she added wearily. ‘I just want to be in control of my life and I never was with you.’

  ‘Cassie, I’ll make it up to you, I promise. I’m really sorry for the way I’ve treated you. I’m off the drink for good this time,’ he said eagerly, grasping her by the arm. Under the streetlight, Cassie noticed that he had aged since she had last seen him; his hair and beard were lightly flecked with grey and the lines around his eyes had deepened. Her heart softened and for a moment she was tempted to put her arms around him. Robbie was like a little boy, really. He thought by saying he was sorry that he would make it up to her and wipe the slate clean. How many times had he said those words to her? It dawned on Cassie that Robbie really had no conception of the grief and pain he had put her through.

  ‘Robbie, I’m very glad that you’ve stopped drinking and I’m delighted you’ve got the job in London. It’s a great career move and I hope you do well out of it. But it’s over between us and nothing is going to change that!’ she said quietly, firmly.

  ‘But, Cassie, I came over to London to be with you. To show you I’ve changed. I couldn’t believe it when they told me you’d been transferred here!’ Robbie protested.

  ‘I asked for the transfer when I heard you were coming, Robbie. I didn’t want you in my life again,’ Cassie said bluntly as she struggled to suppress the shock and anger his surprise visit was causing her.

  ‘I never realized you were so hard, Cassie.’

  ‘That was something I learnt from my time with you, Robbie,’ Cassie retorted bitterly. ‘It’s called self-preservation!’

  ‘You’re telling me it’s over then, definitely over?’ Robbie said slowly.

  Cassie drew a deep breath. ‘Yes, Robbie, it’s over. I’ll always remember the good times and try and forget the bad. I suggest you do the same.’ She started to walk away.

  ‘Couldn’t we at least have dinner together or something,’ Robbie urged. ‘I’ve travelled all the way from London to see you.’

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Well, I was hoping I could stay with you,’ Robbie said wryly.

  ‘I’m sorry, Robbie, that’s out of the question! Look, here’s the name and address of a good guesthouse.’ She scrabbled in her bag for a pen and paper. ‘Give me an hour and a half and I’ll meet you there and we can go and have a bite to eat.’

  ‘OK,’ Robbie agreed glumly, taking the piece of paper from her. He couldn’t get over Cassie. She was so decisive and sure of herself and much more independent than when she had been with him. For the first time since they split, Robbie began to face the fact that Cassie was serious about wanting him out of her life. It was a thought that could put a man back on the beer! He hailed a taxi and Cassie watched him go.

  Maybe she shouldn’t have agreed to have dinner with him, but it was the civilized thing to do. After all, it was better to part as friends. God, she had got a shock to see him standing there. He didn’t play very fair, though, she reflected, as she marched along towards the city centre. She had decided to walk instead of getting a bus, as she needed to clear her head.

  It was the strangest thing. She had run away by leaving London; deep down she acknowledged that. But, after facing Robbie five minutes before, Cassie knew she would never again have to run away from Robbie or her own feelings. When she said it was over, she had finally known it herself. Finally accepted it w
ithout pain. Looking at the man she had once loved and been passionately intimate with, her strongest feeling was one of pity. It shocked her, but it liberated her. At long long last, Cassie was free of her past. It was a turning-point in her life.

  Thirty-four

  Two years later Cassie had bought a house in West Kirby and was inundated with commissions for her interior design skills. She was part of a great social scene at work, engaging in lots of sports, including windsurfing, which she had taken up when she moved out to the peninsula. She was also pursuing a course in fine arts one night a week. She was having the time of her life. Moving to Liverpool was the best thing she had ever done, and she had been told by her superiors that she was in line for promotion.

  Buying the house in West Kirby was a very positive step that had really enhanced the quality of her life. It happened almost by chance the spring after her encounter with Robbie. Ann had mentioned that the house next door to her was up for sale and she was wondering who would buy it and what their new neighbours would be like.

  ‘I wonder how much it will go for?’ said Cassie. The sum that Ann mentioned was not outrageous. In fact with the special low-interest mortgage from the bank that was available to all employees and the few thousand pounds that Aunt Elsie had left to Cassie in her will, it was quite within her range.

  She had heard about Elsie’s bequest only when she went home the Christmas after Barbara’s wedding. Her aunt was a shrewd woman and had played the stock-exchange with no small success. She had left each of her nieces and nephews three thousand pounds, and a larger sum to her sister Nora. Her house and its contents were to be sold and the proceeds to go to the church. Barbara had been disgusted at that and urged Nora to contest the will, but Nora had sent her daughter off with a flea in her ear. The rest of them were all delighted with their windfalls, and because of Aunt Elsie’s generosity, Cassie felt that the time had finally arrived to become a woman of property.

  With Pauline and Ann egging her on, Cassie made an appointment to view. The house had exactly the same layout as theirs. A small entrance hall opened into a living-room, off which was a good-sized fitted kitchen. Upstairs there were two bedrooms and a bathroom. It was an ideal size and Cassie couldn’t help getting excited. The thought of redecorating it to her own taste was exhilarating. A whole house to work on. What a treat for an interior designer! It was the garden that clinched it for Cassie: a long, shrub-filled lush-lawned oasis that reminded her of the garden she had shared with Aileen and Laura so long ago in Ranelagh.

  ‘Buy it! Buy it!’ the other pair urged. ‘And then it won’t matter if our parties get a bit noisy because you’ll be at them.’

  If she bought it, of course, it would mean she had to commute. But that would be a small price to pay, and besides, the train journey from West Kirby to Liverpool was little more than half an hour, through very picturesque countryside. And the big big plus was that she would be living only minutes away from the sea and she could walk along the prom and down by the Marine Lake daily if she wanted.

  Cassie put in her offer with enthusiasm and endured a few nail-biting days before hearing that it had been accepted. From then on it was all systems go. A Cassie house-moving weekend was organized by her friends at work, and before she knew it, she had been shifted lock, stock and barrel from her little flat in Liverpool to her spacious new home. She wasn’t sorry to leave the flat. It was not as comfortable as her London one and, although she had done her best with it, it had been faintly musty and too old for her to effect much improvement.

  Sitting on the stairs of her new home with half a dozen friends and colleagues, munching pizza and drinking wine, Cassie couldn’t keep the grin off her face. This was an achievement to be proud of. Her own place at last. It gave her such a sense of satisfaction. She wasn’t even thirty yet and she had got a mortgage on her own. Independence tasted very sweet. Barbara, from her smug eyrie of marriage, was always dropping barbed little remarks about spinsterhood and being left on the shelf. But Cassie was undisturbed. If she were to die unwed she would do so happily, rather than marry a lazy lout like Ian Murray. As far as she was concerned she couldn’t be happier with her life at the moment. She had everything going for her: a good career, a great social life, her independence and her beloved interior design. For the first time in her life she was doing what she wanted, without having to worry about anybody else. She could come and go as she pleased; she had no commitments to anybody. It was the best of times. There would never again be a year like 1984.

  Nora had been delighted for her. Cassie went home for John’s wedding the summer she bought the house and, knowing how stuck for money John and Karen were, and that they had not planned a honeymoon for the time being, she gave them the keys of her house, told them to get the ferry to Liverpool and stay there for a week. She spent the time with Nora, giving the house a good clean-out for her mother, who wasn’t able to look after the place as well as before.

  Honestly, thought Cassie, as she hung the fireside rugs on the line and whacked the dust out of them, Irene was absolutely hopeless around the place. The idea of giving the rugs a beating or hoovering the cobwebs from behind the wardrobes would never dawn on her. Her latest notion was that she wanted to resign and use Elsie’s bequest to go to the USA, where their wealthy cousin Dorothy lived. Because it was what her baby wanted, Nora thought she should do it, even though it would mean that she was finally alone in the house.

  ‘And what happens when she runs out of money?’ Cassie enquired of her mother when she heard this news.

  ‘Don’t be like that, Cassie. Let her do her own thing. After all, you did yours and the rest of them have done theirs!’ retorted Nora.

  ‘True!’ agreed Cassie and said no more. Irene was a big girl now. Let her run her own life.

  Barbara was six months pregnant, much to her chagrin. Everyone had been surprised to hear about it. It didn’t go with the image of a diarist, as she preferred to call herself, because it had a much more up-market ring than ‘gossip columnist.’ Having a baby would certainly clip Barbara’s social wings.

  Judy, who was now the wife of Andrew Lawson and the mother of a baby boy, seemed to be settling into her role as mother and chic wife to the wealthy Andrew. She confided in Cassie that she was sure that Andrew would dump her when he found out she was pregnant, but he had been delighted and when she had a baby boy he was over the moon. He wanted plenty of sons, Judy said drily, but what he wanted and what he got were two different things and one pregnancy was enough to endure for the moment. Her mother was still not speaking to her!

  Laura and Doug were working day and night, but Doug’s business was expanding all the time and Laura was getting her teeth into some meaty business at work. She had been given more responsibility in the property section of the firm and was actually closing deals.

  Martin came home from Iraq for John’s wedding and Cassie had never seen her brother look so well. He was tanned and healthy-looking and making money hand over fist, he confided. He was going to renew his contract for another term and then come home and set up on his own. She was very pleased for him. Martin had always felt a bit guilty that he wasn’t interested in the market-gardening the way John was, so it was nice to see him doing his own thing. It was a bit of a surprise when he invited Jean Allen to the wedding. Cassie had thought that romance was all over when he went to Iraq.

  It was nice to get home for the week, but she was glad to be going back to her own house. She had a lot to do with the place and she was anxious to continue her decorating.

  When Ann’s and Pauline’s landlady, Winnie, saw Cassie’s redecorated house, she was so impressed she asked her to do her sitting-room and bedroom. Then a friend of Winnie’s had asked her to do a job on her child’s nursery and it just seemed to go on from there. There was never a time when Cassie was not doing a designing and decorating job for somebody and she was in her element. Once or twice, things didn’t work out quite as well as she hoped. She remembered with a shudder a li
lac bathroom that she had to redo completely. But on the whole, Cassie was very satisfied with the way her life was going and with all that she had achieved.

  Nora was driving herself up the walls! She knew she had BiSoDol indigestion tablets somewhere but she was damned if she could remember where she had put them, and her indigestion was getting worse. She just couldn’t shift it. She had tried bread soda, Andrew’s Liver Salts, everything. It was most annoying. She had planned to make her Christmas cakes this evening. After all, it was the beginning of November and she’d want to be getting a move on. This was going to be a special Christmas. Irene’s last one at home and the first for her brand new grandchild. Barbara’s baby was a little beauty and Nora was thrilled with her. She just wished Barbara would visit with her more often. Nora had been a bit shocked to hear that Barbara had no intention of giving up her job to look after the baby. Even Judy O’Shaughnessy, who had not become a mother in the most desirable of circumstances, had stayed at home to rear her child. Not so Barbara. She was going to pay a woman to come in and clean her apartment and take care of her daughter.

  Nora thought it was a terrible state of affairs. To have another woman coming in to your house to do your cleaning and rear your child was in her eyes a sign that you had completely failed in your role as a woman. In her day a woman was expected to keep the home running smoothly and raise the children to the best of her ability and leave the man to bring in the money. All this modern stuff was not working. One had only to look at the broken homes, the violence of society, the lack of respect of young people towards their elders to see that something was very wrong. If Barbara called her old-fashioned for her ideas, she didn’t care. Nora knew she was right. She’d like to have seen Jack’s face if she had announced she was off out to get a job. Maybe she was odd, but she had never felt she was in any way inferior by staying at home to take care of the domestic side of things. Nora had always taken great pride in keeping her house spick-and-span, in cooking tasty meals for the family, and in watching her children grow up happy and healthy. She had her charity work and community involvement and ladies’ club to stimulate her and she never felt deprived because she had not had a career outside the home.