Tara climbed out and stood on the pavement. In spite of the warm evening, she draped the mink coat over her shoulders, leaving her hands free to carry the cases. The door to number eight opened.
‘Coo-ee, there you are. Don’t stand on ceremony, come inside. Let me get you a cuppa, all of you, you’ve had a long journey. I’ve just made a fresh batch of rock buns too.’
Tony Marshall held up his hands. ‘We’ll be on our way thanks all the same, Mrs Dobbs.’
‘Don’t let the name put you off. They’re not like rocks at all, in fact they’re very light. And call me Beryl.’
Tara stared at her grandmother. She’d only ever seen a photograph of her, a black and white one at that. She wore a flowered housecoat and had a pair of furry slippers on her feet. A headscarf covered her roller-clad hair and a cigarette clung to her bottom lip. ‘Tara, is that you? Why, you look like a little Yeti shrouded in that thing. Come here, love. Let’s get you inside.’
Tom bent his head and whispered in Tara’s ear. ‘She seems nice.’
Beryl hurried down the path and opened the front gate. ‘You’ve made good time then. Caught me on the hop, you ’ave.’ She patted her head. ‘Still got me curlers in.’ She opened her arms. ‘Got a hug for your nan then, Tara?’
Tara hesitated but after a nudge in the back from Tom took a step forward into her grandmother’s eager embrace. She smelt of liver and onions. Admittedly, her knowledge of grandmas was virtually non-existent, but she’d imagined a more floral scent, lavender or lily of the valley perhaps.
Mr Marshall cleared his throat. ‘Erm, we’d better get going, Mrs Dobbs.’
‘I’ve just told you, it’s Beryl. Can I at least pack you a couple of buns for your journey?’
‘No need. Come on, Tom, say your goodbyes.’
Tom placed his hands on Tara’s shoulders, not seeming to care that he had garnered a small audience. His father, Beryl and the two little girls who had been playing hopscotch all stood and listened intently to what he had to say. ‘She’ll be back, Tara. Your mum loves you more than anything else.’ He tilted her chin, forcing her to look at him. ‘And I love you too, Tara.’
She swallowed down a small laugh, her heart thumping and fluttering like a budgie trying to escape the confines of its cage. If she never heard those words again for as long as she lived, this moment would always be enough.
‘I love you too, Tom.’
Beryl clapped her hands. ‘Right you are. Come and visit whenever you like. Don’t be a stranger.’
Tom and his father climbed back into the car, Tom in the front seat this time. As they pulled away, he leaned out of the window, waving furiously. Tara returned the gesture and watched until they were almost out of sight. Her grandmother turned her round abruptly. ‘Don’t watch anymore.’
‘Why not?’
Beryl cast her eyes skywards. ‘Has your mother not taught you anything? If you wave to someone until they’re out of sight, it means you will never see them again.’ She folded her arms and nodded as though she had just delivered a piece of irrefutable evidence in a courtroom rather than an old wives’ tale.
Tara followed her grandmother through to the front room which was crammed with furniture, patterns everywhere. Floral curtains, paisley carpet and a tartan three-piece suite. The expression less is more had evidently passed her by. The mantelpiece was adorned with a row of Whimsies. At either end stood matching china poodles, as though they were the guardians of the cheap pottery forest animals. Above the fireplace, on the chimney breast, was a framed portrait of the Queen in all her coronation regalia.
Beryl straightened one of the Whimsies, a hedgehog if Tara was not mistaken.
‘Do you collect them?’ asked Beryl.
‘Erm, no.’
‘Aye well, ’appen you’re right. Take some dusting they do.’ She gestured towards a mahogany display case on the wall. ‘See all them thimbles in there? Every Saturday morning, I take them down and give ’em a good once over with a damp cloth. I’m house proud, you see?’ She said this as though it was an affliction she had no control over, some kind of incurable disease she just had to live with.
Tara glanced at the net curtains but said nothing.
‘Come on then, give us your cases and let’s get you settled in.’
Tara had been allocated the box room and even though the orange-painted woodchip was enough to induce a migraine, for the first time she could remember she had a bedroom all to herself. Beryl, or Nan as she was insisting on being called, had done a thorough job with the Pledge and a duster. Even the net curtains didn’t seem quite as grubby as their counterparts downstairs.
Tara had picked her way through tea: salty bacon ribs which had been on the boil since yesterday and thick slices of white bread and butter. Now she sat by the window and pulled the net curtain to one side. The sound of the ice cream van and its tuneless rendition of ‘Greensleeves’ had brought out a cluster of excited children, their fists clenched around the contents of their piggy banks.
Beryl looked up from her Mills & Boon. ‘Want one?’
‘Oh, no, it’s OK, thanks.’
Beryl uncurled her legs from underneath her and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned a few seconds later with a bowl and brandished it at Tara. ‘Ask him to fill this with raspberry ripple, will you? And extra sauce on top too.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes, you. It’ll be a chance to say hello to the other kids. Sandra’s out there. You two’ll be in the same class come September. She’ll be able to tell you all about your new school.’
‘September! We don’t even know if I’ll still be here in September. Surely Mum’ll be back by then.’
Beryl sighed and put the bowl down on the coffee table. ‘We don’t know that, luvvie. Maybe she will, maybe she won’t. And if she is back, then you can still live here, the three of us. I mean, it’s not as if you have anywhere else to go, is it?’
Tara looked out of the window again. It was easy to spot Sandra in the queue, the only girl anywhere near Tara’s age. Her hair had been cut short, dyed a shocking pink then teased into spikes. She wore a short tartan skirt and what appeared to be a studded dog collar around her neck. She had piercings in her eyebrows, nose and ears. She pulled a long piece of bubble gum out of her mouth and wound it round her finger. A little boy in National Health specs tried to push his way in front of her but Sandra twisted his ear so hard, he burst into tears and ran home.
Tara let go of the curtain and turned away. ‘Erm . . . Nan.’
‘What is it, love?’
‘I need you to help me find my father.’
For a split second, Beryl couldn’t even find her voice. ‘Your . . . father?’
‘Yes, you must know something about him. Mum said he was her boyfriend when she was my age. Surely you remember him?’
‘She told you that, did she?’ She reached for her cigarettes. Tara looked up at the ceiling; the patch over her Nan’s chair was stained yellow with nicotine. ‘I don’t remember him, love.’ Her voice sounded as though she’d swallowed a shovel full of gravel.
‘Please, Nan, think. You must remember him. Mum said she loved him very much. She never told him about me because he moved to Mongolia with his parents. I’ve had a look at Mr Long’s atlas – he’s my geography teacher – and it’s miles away.’
Beryl choked on the cigarette. She thumped her chest, her eyes watering. ‘Mongolia! As in Outer Mongolia? What on earth has that got to do with the price of fish? I thought that was a made-up place like that whatsit . . .’ She twirled her finger in the air, searching for the answer. ‘Ooh, what’s it called now . . . Timbuktu, that’s it.’
‘Timbuktu is a real place, Nan. It’s in Mali, in Africa.’
Beryl frowned. ‘Are you sure? Well, I’ll go to the foot of our stairs. I never knew that.’ She narrowed her eyes and tilted her head. Tara could almost hear the cogs whirring.
‘What about Back-of-Beyond then?’ she asked.
‘
What about it?’
‘Well is that a real place too?’
‘No,’ replied Tara, trying to keep the exasperation out of her voice. ‘Of course it isn’t. Nan, we’re wandering so far off the subject, we’ll need a road map to find our way back.’
She sat on the faux-leather pouffe next to her nan’s slippered feet and repeated her earlier question. ‘Nan, do you remember my father or not?’
Beryl took another long drag, the end of the cigarette glowing brightly. She stubbed it out in the ashtray and reached for another. ‘Our Violet was popular with the lads,’ she said eventually. She clicked her lighter several times until the elusive flame appeared. ‘I’m sorry, love. I don’t remember her being fond of anyone in particular, but in any case, if he moved to that Mongolia whatsit, then that’s that. You can’t pack up your stuff and go looking for him out there, can you?’
‘Suppose not.’
‘Look, you’ve lasted this long without him and now you’ve got me to look after you. Do you think you can forget about him now, eh?’
‘Are you sure there’s nothing about him you can remember?’
Beryl stared at the ceiling. She took a deep breath in through her nose. Several minutes passed before she spoke again. ‘OK, then, I’ll tell you what I know.’
38
‘I blame myself, I do,’ said Beryl.
It certainly wasn’t the opening gambit Tara was expecting. ‘You blame yourself for Violet getting pregnant?’
The cigarette Beryl had been holding now had a long piece of ash clinging on precariously. ‘Well, I blame myself and I blame Hitler.’ The ash fell off and landed in her lap. She didn’t seem to notice.
‘What has Hitler got to do with Mum getting pregnant?’
Beryl frowned as though the answer was obvious. ‘If he’d not invaded Poland then we wouldn’t have gone to war and then the Americans wouldn’t have had to send over all them rakish GIs. It was no wonder we fell for them. They seemed so exotic, chewed gum and that. And they ate pizzas. How were we supposed to resist all that, eh? By the summer of 1942 there were thousands of them. Lost my virginity at fifteen, I did.’ Beryl shrugged. ‘You see? It was all Hitler’s fault.’
Tara nodded. It was certainly a slant on history not covered by her school syllabus and she was struggling to see what this had to do with Violet.
‘Anyhow, I got caught with your mum in September 1947. The father wasn’t a GI sadly, they’d all gone home by then. No, it was the lad who delivered our coal. Strong arms he had, all that heaving sacks about had given him some hard muscles alright. Good-looking too even though his face was always covered in coal dust. It gave him an irresistible swarthy look. He took quite a shine to me too.’ She glanced at Tara. ‘Oh, I know you wouldn’t think it now, but I was quite a looker in them days.’
Tara could well believe it. Beryl wasn’t like other nans. She was tall and straight, a peroxide-enhanced halo of golden curls framing a largely unlined face. And she wore huge dangly earrings. And nail varnish. She wasn’t that old either, fifty-one if Tara’s maths was correct.
‘Anyway,’ Beryl continued, ‘it wasn’t to be. Didn’t want owt to do with me once he found out I was in the family way.’ She narrowed her eyes and wagged her finger at Tara. ‘They’re all the same, love. Quite happy to have their way with you but once they’ve knocked you up you don’t see them for dust. Coal dust in my case.’ She gave a little chuckle. ‘It were a terrible shame in them days too. I was only twenty by this time and my mum and dad were none too pleased either. To their credit though, they didn’t chuck me out.’
‘He came back though, did he? The coal boy.’
Beryl produced a tar-laden laugh. ‘No, love, he didn’t.’
‘Oh, dear, I’m . . . erm . . . sorry.’ Tara shifted her position on the pouffe and waited for the next instalment.
‘New Year’s Eve 1947 it was when I met George in a pub back home in Manchester.’
Tara recognised the name. ‘My grandfather?’
‘That’s right. I told him from the off that I was three months gone but he wasn’t bothered. He was so smitten I could have told him I was expecting triplets and he wouldn’t have run for the hills. We moved over here for the sea air and all that and George found a job in a sweet factory. We were married before our Violet was born and I put his name on her birth certificate. She was conceived on the wrong side of the blanket, see, and I didn’t want her to live with the label of being illiterate.’
‘Illegitimate, Nan.’
‘Oh, aye, I always get them words muddled up. Prostrate and prostate’s another two. I mean who makes these words up? If it were up to me then . . .’
‘Nan,’ interrupted Tara, trying to keep Beryl on track. ‘So George wasn’t Violet’s real dad then? Did she know?’
Beryl nodded. ‘Yes, she did, but not at first. It all came out in the school playground. You know how cruel kids can be. Taunting her they were. It was that boss-eyed kid from number three mainly.’ She pursed her lips. ‘I’ll never forgive the interfering little tw . . . twit.’
‘Where’s George now then?’ asked Tara. ‘I thought he would’ve been home by now.’
Beryl lowered her eyes and fiddled with a loose button on her cardigan. ‘I’ll have to get my needle and thread out before this comes off altogether.’
‘Nan?’
Beryl looked up, her face blank. ‘George is dead, love.’
‘What?’ She wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do. Show some emotion, give her nan a hug and offer her condolences? She leaned forward and patted Beryl’s knee. ‘I’m sorry, Nan.’
Beryl reached for her cigarettes again and held one between her fingers without bothering to light it. ‘When our Violet got pregnant, George threw her out. I wanted her to stay. We had a huge barney about it. I would’ve supported her just like my mum and dad did me but she was keen to go too. She wouldn’t tell me anything about the father so that was it, she upped and left.’
‘Didn’t you go after her?’
‘I tried but George stopped me.’
‘But she was only fourteen.’
‘Aye, fourteen going on twenty-four. She knew her own mind did that one.’ Beryl nodded towards the window as she finally lit the cigarette. ‘Close the curtains, love.’
‘Why? It’s not dark yet.’
‘Just do it.’
Tara did as she was told and sat back down, the room now dim and gloomy.
‘Thank you, love. Now, where was I? Oh yes, well, I went to the police, didn’t I? I didn’t tell George naturally, I knew he wouldn’t like it. But I couldn’t just leave it, I had to do something. I knew she wasn’t in any danger, it wasn’t like she’d been abducted or owt. Police would’ve taken more notice if she had been, I expect. But no, she was just another teenage runaway to them.’
‘The police are not all that interested this time either,’ said Tara.
‘Well, she’s a grown woman now, isn’t she? They’ve got enough on their plates with that Ripper fella on the loose. What a maniac he is.’
Tara shuddered. ‘Mmm . . . maybe you’re right.’
‘She rang from time to time, from a phone box, like, but she would never tell me where she was. Just that she was OK and I wasn’t to try and find her. She rang when you were born and I begged her to come home but she wouldn’t.’
‘Was she with my father, do you think? Like I said, she always told me that they were very much in love but he didn’t know anything about me and had gone off to Mongolia with his parents to trap fur. Maybe that wasn’t true. Perhaps they were together.’
Beryl shrugged. ‘’Appen they were. All I know is Hitler’s antics turned me into a promiscuous young girl and Violet obviously took after me.’
Later, as Tara lay under the covers struggling to sleep, she thought about Violet and how she must have struggled on her own with a baby to look after. In all her life, Tara had never felt anything other than loved and cared for. She climbed out of bed and crept ac
ross the landing to her nan’s room. The door was ajar, the dim light within pointing to the fact Beryl was still awake. She tapped on the door. ‘Nan?’
‘Come in, Tara love. What is it?’
‘I can’t sleep.’
Beryl was sitting up in bed reading, her face smothered in cold cream. ‘Well that makes two of us then.’ She laid down her book and patted the space next to her. ‘Climb aboard.’
Tara nestled under the covers and snuggled up to her nan. She felt her kiss the top of her head. ‘It’s only been six weeks, love. Don’t give up on her yet. She’ll be back, I can feel it in me water.’
‘I just want her home, Nan. I don’t know how somebody can just disappear. Something terrible must have happened to her. She wouldn’t just leave me, I know she wouldn’t.’ Tara closed her eyes, the comforting weight of her nan’s arm around her shoulders.
‘There, there,’ soothed Beryl. ‘I’m ’ere for you now. I may have let our Violet down but there’s no way I’ll let anything happen to you. You’re safe ’ere with me and we’ll look after each other until your mum gets back. What do you say?’
Tara managed a smile. This husky-voiced, chain-smoking grandmother of hers might not be Violet. But she was the next best thing.
39
The phone was ringing in the kitchen, the sound reverberating off the white tiled walls. Beryl’s voice came from somewhere upstairs. ‘Who on earth is that at this time, Tara?’
Tara smiled to herself. Every time the phone rang or the front door bell went, Beryl would ask the same question, as if Tara had some kind of psychic power or X-ray vision.
‘I’ll get it, Nan.’
She snatched up the phone. ‘Lytham 3452.’
‘Tara?’
She almost dropped the receiver. ‘Tom, it’s you, hi.’
‘Thought I’d wish you luck on your first day at your new school.’
‘You only spoke to me on Sunday.’ She twirled the coiled flex of the telephone between her fingers, her wide smile making her cheeks ache.
‘So, who’s counting? I miss you, Tara.’
Her Last Promise Page 21
