The Liverpool Trilogy

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Hilda.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘Our Eileen would have told him, but she’s too … too head-on. It would have been drawings of willies and women’s personals, and—’

  ‘Stop it.’ Hilda held up a hand. It occurred to her that she would miss this dear woman, but someone had to stay with Mel and Miss Morrison. ‘Nellie?’

  ‘What, love?’

  ‘I want to show you something. And I want you to keep it secret for the time being. I mean that. You mustn’t say a single word.’

  ‘I promise, I do. I promise on both me bunions.’

  ‘Oh, I shall miss you, Nellie. And I shall stamp on both your bunions if you let me down. We need to tread softly for a while.’

  Nellie bit back a remark about always treading softly near people’s bunions. ‘I’ll be here some weekends and school holidays. There’s somebody with the WVS says she’ll look after the old lady for us. Don’t be sad about me going. Eileen and Keith will take at least one of the lads.’

  Hilda, halfway across the bedroom, stopped in her tracks. ‘Of course they must go to their mother if they wish, but that’s a very small house, and …’

  ‘And you love your boys, eh, Hilda?’ In less than a year, Hilda, Neil, Jay and Keith had tamed even the oldest. Philip, a natural handyman, had proved particularly good at painting and decorating. He had also developed a strong affection for Jay Collins, who was not always careful with his diabetes. ‘He’s happy, our Phil. Isn’t he?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ The mistress of the house pulled something out from beneath her dressing table. ‘More than happy, Nellie. A lot more.’

  Nellie took the pad. It boasted page after page of sketches, some in pencil, others in charcoal, one in black ink. Jay Collins, eyes closed, sat on the ground and leaned for support against the scarred wall of a barn. With his cap worn sideways and his ankles crossed, he slept through his lunch break, an empty butty tin on the cobbles beside him. Nellie could almost hear his snores. Every flaw on the stone-built barn was recorded; even the frayed edge of Jay’s cap was in its place.

  Trees seemed to grow and sway, horses wanted to leap from the pages, people were practically walking off the paper. ‘You’re a clever girl, Hilda.’

  ‘They’re not mine, Nellie. I didn’t do them.’

  ‘No? Aw, look at this – Gill and Jay’s Maisie asleep in her pram.’

  ‘Phil did them.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘They’re Phil’s.’

  Nellie pushed the pad away because she didn’t want to mar perfection with tears. ‘He’s a good drawer,’ Eileen had said frequently, and clever Nellie had agreed, offering the opinion that Phil was a full chest of drawers, as he often concealed goods, usually stolen, about his person. Mel was the family genius; Phil was a lazy sod who did as little as possible. ‘It’s been waiting to come out, hasn’t it, Hilda?’

  ‘Yes.’ She went on to explain that Philip, while tidying the attic, had found Uncle Adam’s pads, pens, chalks and paints. ‘He dug out easel, canvases and paints. You should see what he can do with a palette knife, Nellie. But that’s all under his bed – he doesn’t know I know he took it. He thinks he’s lost this sketch block, so I plan to “find” it and ask him who owns it.’ She paused. ‘Nellie?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t cry. This lot has to go to Manchester. Phil deserves a place in a good school of art. First, he has to know that I know. It has to be me. I am unbiased, since I’m not family.’

  A stunned Nellie dried disobedient eyes. So. Eileen had produced a lawyer bound for Cambridge, an artist, a farmer and a soon-to-be expert on horses. What was she carrying now? A brain surgeon? ‘I wish I could be here,’ she moaned. ‘But Eileen has to come back with her husband, bless them. She’ll be safer at Willows Edge. And I’ll be there for our Mel. Doesn’t everything happen at once?’ She scuttered off to her own room where she could weep privately. Her Philip was a Leonardo da Vinnie. Something like that, anyway.

  It was a slow and tedious process, and it was clear that Marianne Bingley was occasionally having her patience tested, but she was too stubborn to abandon the project. Coming to after a session was unnerving, because little shards of deliberately buried memories lingered for a while just beyond reach of her consciousness, so she never got the whole picture. Yet she was, for the most part, calm and unafraid, so some good was coming out of the treatment.

  Sally Barnes of Rodney Street was a pioneer. A psychologist, she employed hypnosis, and was considered by most medics to be a quack, but Tom believed in her, as she had achieved marked success with those who could afford her fees. She trod softly. Marie needed softly. And it was worth a try, surely? Divorce was messy and expensive. Divorce hurt people, many of whom were children who might well grow up with no belief in love, in endurance, in effort.

  Tom watched his wife as she emerged from the consulting rooms. The change in her was remarkable, not to say miraculous. This was a woman lighter of step and of heart, a prettier person, one who was ordered now to sleep with her husband, but never to touch him. He, too, had to keep his distance. Marriage to a victim of abuse would never be easy, but he was doing his bloody best.

  After settling in the front passenger seat, she informed him that she had signed an agreement, and Tom could now speak to Sally Barnes.

  ‘You’re sure, Marie? She’ll be telling me what she’s discovered about you.’

  ‘Of course. Also, it’s your turn to be a guinea pig. Remember? The treatment’s for both of us. I’ve signed so that she can discuss my progress, but you need help, too.’ She smiled at him. ‘Don’t be a coward.’

  He stared through the windscreen for a few moments, the past year running across his mind like a quickened movie. Eileen had rejected him. That beautiful urchin had decided that Dr Tom Bingley was not a nice man. Uncertainty had crept in then, had been underscored with double black lines when she had married the chap from Bolton. ‘Marie?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Please tell me I’m not a bad man.’

  Whatever Sally Barnes did while Marie was under hypnosis seemed to be working, because she suddenly needed to comfort her husband, but she couldn’t, since contact was forbidden. ‘You aren’t a bad man. Now, get in there and find out what’s what and who’s who, and when the war will be over.’

  He laughed. ‘She’s not a blooming fortune-teller.’

  ‘Isn’t she? Oh goodness, I’ve been coming to the wrong place for months.’

  The dull wife had humour. He remembered the timid rabbit, the ‘rape’ victim, the aprons, a well-set table, gravy in a little silver-plated boat. These days, cutlery was piled in a shallow box on the sideboard, fight among yourselves, not enough napkins today because she’s done no washing. No longer apologetic about dried egg and meat-free dishes, she giggled and laughed during tasteless meals, and their twins were happier, too. Gloria was becoming seriously beautiful. Peter continued a star, while their father delivered his collection of near-risqué jokes along with mashed potatoes and home-grown carrots. ‘It would be easy to fall in love with you, Marie Bingley, but it’s forbidden. We must not touch. She is a cruel and heartless woman.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What does yes mean, madam?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? I’m always under the spell of Mesmer when she gets stuff out of me and plants ideas. Ask her. I just know I’m different, that’s all. I’ve changed. Sometimes, I don’t know me.’ Norman didn’t matter any more. Marie wanted her marriage to work.

  She was different, all right. Tom leapt from the car and ran up the stone steps of a rather grand Georgian terrace.

  He was talking quite normally, asking questions, making comments about his wife; then, suddenly, he woke up. ‘What happened?’ he asked. ‘What have you done to me, Sally?’

  Sally Barnes laughed. ‘You now know all you need to know about that wonderful, sweet woman you married. It’s been deposited in your mind
and in hers, and it may surface, may not. From now, we go onward, not backwards.’

  ‘What use is that?’ he blustered. ‘I need to know her past and the reasons for her problems. Was she abused?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘By whom?’

  The woman lifted her shoulders and raised both hands, palms upward. ‘Tom, I don’t believe in shock therapy. If I did, I’d have handed Marie over to some mouthy psychiatrist, and she’d be lying on a trolley with electrodes on her head. The Marie I found, the inner Marie, remembers everything. She’s a fine woman with a good brain, so just leave it. There are people all over this country whose brains are fit only for serving on toast after too many electro-convulsive sessions, and no one knows how much is too much, so I kept her away from bloody psychiatry. You both know all there is to know. The question you ask about her abuser needs no reply from me, because the answer’s taken root in your head. Shocks may come, though they won’t be electric. Find yourselves.’

  ‘But I don’t remember—’

  ‘You will if and when you need to. As will she. I do not use invasive treatments, and it is my belief that you will thrive. No sexual contact. Not just yet.’

  Tom narrowed his eyes. ‘And I’m paying you?’

  ‘Handsomely, and I love you. But not enough to take my knickers off.’

  ‘Bugger.’

  ‘Buggery? Only if desperate, and don’t get caught.’

  As he left the room, Tom realized that he felt lighter, happier. This had been the case with Marie for months, so there was wisdom in the hypno-psychologist. He sat in the car and studied his wife. The blue coat suited her.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Exactly. She put me under, my dear. While I was not of this world, she probably told me all about you and all about my failings. When I emerged from the trance, I remembered nothing.’

  Marie tutted. ‘So, if and when we do remember, we are to contact her, Tom, in case we’re traumatized. We should make sure we remember in the early hours of a cold morning, then we’ll get our money’s worth. And we should be extraordinarily traumatized. We might wear strange clothes and scream in the streets.’ A barrier had been taken down, and she no longer spent time thinking of Norman; instead, she thought of Tom.

  ‘The neighbours would die of shock.’

  She grinned impishly. ‘It would make a change for them. Most have been no further than Southport, and hell could be illuminating.’

  Where had she hidden for so many years? Marie had been one of those plain women who, when approaching middle age, reaped the benefit of having been ordinary in youth. She had good skin, pretty eyes and a generous mouth. And he suddenly knew that it was his fault, if fault could ever be the right word. He’d made no effort to coax and coach her, had failed to enliven a girl whose sense of humour seemed to have died. Until now. It wasn’t too late. Madam up-the-stairs Mesmer knew what she was doing, and he saw straight through her. Sex was off the menu. It was off the list so that they would disobey like naughty children. Was Marie ready? Was he ready to be rejected?

  ‘Let’s go home, Tom.’

  He started the car. ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘And I love you, though I have to confess to having wanted to kill you.’

  ‘That’s normal.’

  Her head shot sideways and she stared at him. ‘Rubbish.’

  ‘Females of all species get bogged off with being imposed upon.’

  ‘Sexually?’ she asked.

  ‘And darning.’

  Marie went back to studying the comings and goings on Liverpool’s Harley Street. The corners of her mouth twitched while she composed in her mind a picture of a cow with a darning mushroom and an oversized needle. All species? ‘You’re incurable, doc.’

  ‘Yes. Let’s try to get fish and chips on the way home, eh? I can’t go another six rounds with your vegetable pie. It’s gross.’

  ‘Darn your own socks, then.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Marie—’

  ‘Take me home. Now.’ He took her home.

  The next morning found a stark naked doctor sitting on the cushioned seat of a wicker chair near a bedroom window whose curtains and blackouts remained closed. Feeling slightly punch-drunk, he gazed at the form in the bed, a woman with whom he had lived for many years, a woman to whom he had made love just once. The experience had been … intense.

  She hadn’t told him to stop, hadn’t cried or sighed sadly, but she had fallen asleep very quickly afterwards. And why was he sitting here like a child after a spelling test? Was he waiting for marks out of ten? Did he need a reference, a badge of office to sport on a lapel, I finally managed it? Had he managed it? Apart from one shallow scratch on a shoulder, he had emerged unmarked, so the token bite-back of the tigress hadn’t been employed. Nor had the Vaseline … It was progress, surely? Dear God, let it be progress, and don’t allow me to hurt her ever again. That had to become the eleventh commandment: thou shalt not damage thy wife.

  She turned over, and he found himself biting the knuckles of a closed right fist. He was perverse, and he knew it, because he’d started desiring her as soon as she had stopped wanting to stay married to him. After failing to catch Eileen Watson, he’d commenced a search for treatment so that Marie might be resurrected for his sake. He was a selfish man.

  Marie shot into a sitting position. ‘Tom? Where are you?’

  ‘I’m here. Switch on that lamp.’

  She complied. ‘We shouldn’t have. She said … We’ll be in trouble.’

  ‘So?’ Her hair was tousled, and he found himself thinking of children on Blackpool beach, sand pies, tumbling locks of curly hair, shoes buried somewhere with Dad’s glasses and the Daily Express. ‘You could have told me to stop. I told you to tell me to stop.’

  ‘She’ll kill us. We weren’t supposed to … We had to wait until … Don’t you dare laugh. Laugh, and I’ll darn your mouth shut. As the leading light in the WVS, I am a dab hand with needle and wool, so be careful.’

  She sounded happy. He wanted her to be happy. ‘You’d have to catch me first. Calm down. She told us not to have sex so that we would. Remember Peter when he was a terrible two? You forbade him to eat his vegetables, so he ate them. Then he ate Gloria’s, yours and some of mine. Simple reverse psychology. You see, the level at which Sally works on us is forever the child. In all of us, that two-year-old thrives and keeps banging its head on the wall of life. It’s petulant, disobedient and bloody-minded. She dug us out, Marie.’

  ‘Did she?’

  He nodded. ‘Did I hurt you?’

  ‘No.’

  Instinct forced him not to pursue this line of questioning. ‘We have half an hour before reveille. Move over, I’m coming aboard.’

  She whispered her worry about screaming and disturbing the twins, and he told her that she could scream into his mouth, and that he would swallow her noise. ‘Why would you scream?’

  ‘Because something’s happening. Inside me.’

  Tom Bingley would never know why he wept in this acutely erotic moment. Perhaps it was the sense of loss, of time wasted, of the pain she had suffered. Guilt settled like a rock in his stomach, and he was unequal to the task of serving her properly. He was useless, stupid, and filled with self-loathing.

  ‘I can hear her,’ Marie whispered. ‘She told me while I was under what to do if this happened. She’s right. What she tells us comes back when we need it. Clever woman. Don’t cry. I’ll be gentle.’

  Tom blinked the saline from his eyes. Reverse psychology, now role reversal. Sally Barnes was worth every penny. And he was the one who screamed.

  Mel fixed her gaze on Gloria Bingley. This same Gloria Bingley had been, until recently, a dumpy girl with sepia skin, dull hair and no discernible physical assets. Then she had blossomed. A small part of Mel was envious, because people with darker features were more clearly defined, while blondes lacked edges, since hair drifted into skin without showing a join. Gloria was going to be a stunner. She was also picking up on the a
cademic front, because improved looks gave her confidence in several areas of life. ‘What’s wrong now?’ Mel asked.

  ‘It’s embarrassing,’ Gloria pronounced. ‘Isn’t it enough to have a brother who calls me Titty-Fal-Lal since I developed? Now I’ve also got parents who’ve gone from stalemate to at-it-like-rabbits. My mother’s an out-and-out trollop, and my dad’s a sex maniac. This is no way for an impressionable girl to live. I’ve been reading a bit of psychology, and the books say we should be nurtured mentally and physically. Well, all the nurturing’s going on upstairs and we don’t get a look-in. Just as well, since I’d hate to watch them at play.’

  Mel delivered a raspberry. ‘At least you have a decent brother. All I have are three criminals in the brother department. Mind, I have to say, however begrudgingly, that the hellions have improved. Then there’s Mam, Gran and Keith the Kisser. My mother’s just married the man of her dreams, and it’s a full-blown nightmare. Miss Morrison seems to think it’s hilarious, but I’ve always suspected a bawdy side to her – something to do with a caretaker in a cellar centuries ago – don’t ask. Mam’s pregnant already, and they’ve been married all of five minutes. I could finish up with twenty siblings.’

  Gloria hadn’t thought about that side of things. ‘Buggery,’ she spat.

  ‘Illegal, but buggers don’t produce brats, so that’s something in their favour.’

  ‘I don’t want any mucky-bummed infants parked in the hall. I keep my bike there when it’s cold or raining. Then there’s the coat stand. Yuk. Mel, what can I do?’

  Mel shrugged. ‘If they were dogs, the vet would see to them. But as things stand, all we have is a rumour that Hitler plans to have undesirables neutered. Your mother and father aren’t Jewish, Romany or mentally retarded, so—’

  ‘My mother can’t count.’

  ‘Gloria, cling to that thought. If we lose the war, the invaders will have your mother spayed.’ She sighed heavily. ‘What’s come over them? Is the government putting something in the water so that we’ll have another generation to fight for us in twenty years?’

  Gloria shrugged. ‘Dad says we’re programmed to cull ourselves. If we don’t kill each other, we have plagues instead. Bubonic, Teutonic—’