She remembered the conclusion she had reached months ago: there had to have been another woman. Don adored his children, had stayed for their sake. ‘And all I did was moan about the flat, the business, my own precious self, a house on Menlove Avenue, and Skaters’ Trails blooming carpet. Idiot.’ He couldn’t be blamed for seeking comfort elsewhere. How did she feel about it? She hadn’t the slightest idea. Well, no, that wasn’t quite the case. She was empty, yet there was no jealousy. ‘I understand,’ she admitted aloud after a few seconds. ‘Don was lonely. Marriage can be the loneliest place.’
While slicing carrots, she failed to concentrate, cutting quite deeply into the middle finger of her left hand. There was very little pain, just a twinge when she moved her hand. Orange circles of carrot and red droplets of blood did not look well together. Who was the other woman? Where was she? Did he love her? As she made to stand, all strength drained suddenly from her body. She felt it leaving her head, her chest, her abdomen and, finally, her legs. There was blood everywhere. It was all over the floor. How could so much come from a nick in a finger?
With Saturday’s lunch unfinished, she began to lose consciousness, fell off the chair and lay on a black-and-white chequered floor across which a pool of bright blood began to spread. Her last thought was that the braising steak might burn. There would be no dinner and … and …
Fortunately, Don was the one who found her. As he dialled 999, he thanked God that his children were absent, because the scene was truly terrifying. And she couldn’t die, mustn’t die. He loved her. And there was Molly, then all this blood; it was coming from Tess’s womb, he thought. And there was Molly and this house and Anne-Marie on her way back from work and— ‘Do something,’ he snapped. ‘Stop Mollying about.’
Cold water on towels pushed up between her legs, blood in her beautiful hair, so lovely, that hair. Face drained of colour, hands so white that touches of pale pink nail varnish managed to look garish. She was a fair-skinned woman anyway, but this was … different. A finger had been cut; at the same time, the trouble in her insides had shown itself, and she was bleeding towards death. Where the hell was the ambulance?
At last, the tinny sound of distant bells reached him and got louder. Was she breathing? Was her heart beating? As the front door crashed inward, Don found himself hoping that Tess’s new panelling hadn’t been damaged, because she guarded that with her life. Her life. Did she have one?
Two huge men entered the room. ‘Women’s Hospital,’ said the first. ‘Follow in your car, Mr … er …’
‘Compton,’ Don managed.
‘Yes, well, we’d best be quick, Mr Compton. Leave the room, please, while we get her stretchered. And calm yourself, because blood always looks more than it is.’
Don went into the living room. Through the window, he watched the men pushing his wife into the ambulance. Neighbours stood about in small, chattering clutches. Blood. He couldn’t let Anne-Marie find all that blood. But he had to get to the Women’s … He couldn’t be in two places at once. Even Tess had never managed to be in two places at once. Wife. Blood. Wife or blood? The knee started to throb. Even thinking about cleaning the floor made the whole leg ache.
He cleaned. It was what she would have wanted. Like him, she preferred to shelter the children from unnecessary suffering, so Don worked at shifting blood that had flowed very recently through the veins of his Tess. Two bath towels went straight into the outside dustbin; the remainder of the mess was shifted by a long mop and a bucket of disinfected water. Did the white tiles look a bit pinkish? Was his wife alive or dead? Were the kids almost home? Oh, God, don’t make me have to live without her. She might be a terrible woman in some respects, but she’s my terrible woman.
Here they came, another pair guilty of assaulting Tess’s precious panelling by throwing the front door against it. And she rushed into his mind, a tiny girl who slept in a gypsy caravan, an infant too small to fight her siblings for food, and he studied her chosen place of safety for a few seconds. This kitchen was her shelter, her comfort zone. Poverty was Tess’s dread, her nemesis—
‘Dad?’
He turned off the oven. ‘Anne-Marie. Sean.’
‘Where’s the dinner?’ the latter asked.
Don looked at the ceiling and shook his head. ‘Haven’t you noticed something else missing, lad? Like your mother? That woman you see every day, fair hair, blue eyes, the person who cooks and cleans and—’ He closed his mouth tightly. Making his son feel guilty would not improve matters. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to say all that, not to you. She’s on her way to hospital. I stayed to clean up the … the mess.’
‘Why hospital?’ Anne-Marie’s voice was shrill, childlike.
‘I think they call it a haemorrhage, love.’
‘Is that bleeding?’
‘Yes. Yes, it is. I cleaned it up. She would have wanted that.’
Anne-Marie swallowed audibly. ‘Would have wanted? Is she … dead?’
‘No. I don’t think so.’
Sean stared hard at his dad. ‘Why are we standing here?’ he asked.
Don offered no reply. He didn’t know why his legs wouldn’t move. Yes, he did. His legs wouldn’t budge because the rest of him didn’t want the answer. Was she dead? He heard himself. Tess, why is there a mousetrap in the clean linen cupboard?
She had laughed at him. Her throat, when she raised her head to laugh, was swan-like, slender but firm, white, kiss-able. We have a mouse, you nutter. They come out at night. You don’t want your foot caught in the trap, do you? So I put it away in the morning, get more cheese, bait the thing and put it out last thing at night. Yes, there had been an explanation for all of it. Early menopause? Or something else, something that tried to take her life on a beautiful summer Saturday? And he allowed the word through at last. Cancer. Rumour had it that the disease loved oxygen, so after a patient had been opened up … Another old wives’ tale.
‘Dad?’ Anne-Marie was clearly approaching hysteria. ‘Come on, please,’ she begged. ‘She needs us with her. What’s the matter with you?’
Sean answered for his father. ‘Shock.’
None of them would remember any details of the journey to the Women’s Hospital. Don, an automaton, obeyed traffic lights and Give Way signs, but the car seemed to guide itself in the right direction. As soon as he parked, his son and daughter jumped out and leapt in the direction of the main entrance.
He followed on feet of lead. Inside, he discovered that his wife, who had been judged an emergency, was in theatre. He signed something or other without fully realizing that he had given staff carte blanche as far as treatment was concerned, then was led by a nurse to a chair next to his children. ‘Your dad’s in a bit of a state,’ she advised Sean. ‘Come with me, and we’ll get him some sweet tea.’
As he sipped the hot liquid, Don began his return to the here and now. ‘How did we get to the hospital?’ he asked Anne-Marie.
‘You drove.’
‘Did I?’
The girl nodded. It looked as if both her parents were no longer in working order. ‘You need that sugar, Dad. Mam’s having her … I think it’s her womb removed. And blood transfusions. They tried to explain to me, because I’m a girl, and they said a word with fibre in it.’
‘Fibroids,’ said Don, whose blood sugar level was improving fast. ‘They’re not cancer, but they’re growths.’
‘Will she be all right?’ Sean asked.
‘I have faith in her and in this place. This is a damn good hospital. But the real answer is I don’t know. We have to pray, I think.’ He drained his cup. That had been the best cuppa ever. Oh, Tess. Surely God wasn’t ready for an eccentric who looked after squirrels and birds, who worried lest he caught his foot in a mousetrap, whose fear of poverty had made her outwardly hard and acquisitive? She was so different, so decided, so Irish, so beautiful, so difficult. It could not be her time, not yet. In her late thirties, menopause had not been expected; but it probably wasn’t menopause at all. No, it was mo
re likely to have been these bloody fibroids. Bloody was a good adjective in this scenario.
After an afternoon as long as a week, a nurse took Don on one side. ‘She’s in recovery, Mr Compton. They’ll keep an eye on her there for a couple of hours. You won’t be able to see her for a while, because she lost a lot of blood, and we need to wait for the anaesthetic to wear off. But she’s young, well nourished and in good health apart from this problem with the fibroids and endometriosis – that’s a kind of internal bleeding. Her blood pressure’s a bit low, but it’s an improvement on earlier readings. You were lucky to find her in time.’
‘Yes. Thanks.’ He returned unsteadily to his offspring and delivered an edited version.
Suddenly hungry, the pair went off to scout the neighbourhood for food.
Don sat. You were lucky to find her in time. Where had he been? He’d been paying his dues in Molly’s bed, had been recompensing his mistress for providing Tess with the house she had craved. Molly had been his beloved during years of starvation, had spoken to him properly while Tess had screamed or sat silently during meals when the children were present. Molly had given him back his masculinity. He swallowed hard. For some months, he had served two women, and the cost of his duplicity would be high.
Why should Tess pay that price? He knew now that she’d had her reasons for behaving as she had; it had not been her fault. Whatever happened, she would pay. Her life still hung in the balance; the loss of that might be the ultimate price. If she survived, she might lose her place of safety, the house of which she was so naively proud. It was just a semi in an area that sported many pairs of such buildings, but it was her palace, her security, her territory. He remembered fear in her eyes, nightmares during which she kicked and screamed because there were too many siblings in her bed.
I have to talk to Molly. I must go to her as soon as possible and tell her I’ve been unfaithful with my wife as well as to my wife. When the axe falls, I’ll just have to cope. Tess has changed, but her childhood hasn’t. She might go back to those awful black dreams if we lose the house, and we have to lose the house. Thank God I never got to Harley Street to have my knee done, because I would have owed Molly for that as well.
‘Mr Compton?’ A gentle hand touched his shoulder. It was the same nurse who had brought sweet tea. ‘Here you are. Two sarnies, one’s egg, the other’s salmon and cucumber, I think. It’s Sister’s. She’s the only one who can afford red salmon. Oh, and here’s a glass of lemonade.’
He broke, tears pouring down his cheeks. The nurse got help, picked up the food, and followed Don into the sister’s office. A porter placed him in a comfortable chair. ‘There ya go, lad,’ he said in broad Scouse. ‘Let our Loosey-Loose look after you, eh? Real name’s Lucy, but she won ’er nickname. Loose? Her drawers’ve been fitted with a lift mechanism – press her nose, and they go all the way down to the cellar.’
The nurse clouted the porter, who left the room wearing a brown overall coat, a sore shoulder and a broad grin.
‘Don’t cry,’ she urged. ‘I have a sneaking feeling that your madam will be painting the wards with a two-inch brush come Monday. She woke. And I think she picked up where she left off. Was she cooking?’
Don sniffed back a new flood of emotion. ‘She woke?’
‘Told me to switch the oven off or her steak would burn. Then she went back to sleep. She might have been tired, but she was bossy.’
Don allowed a long, shuddering sigh to leave his body. The sigh carried with it a story, and Don found himself placing the rather confused weight of his guilt on the shoulders of a very young woman. ‘And she’ll lose her house, so it’ll be back to her childhood when she’s asleep, that caravan, too many kids and not enough food. And yes, she’s a bossy boots and no, I wouldn’t part with her for all the clocks in Switzerland. I’ve been a fool, haven’t I?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Compton, but we all make mistakes, you know.’
‘So am I sorry, Lucy. When we moved into the house, the first thing she did was spend a mint and stash food everywhere. Kitchen cupboards got crammed, and she put tinned food in the bottom of every wardrobe. She can’t bear to see birds or squirrels without something to eat, so we’re overrun. One cheeky little squirrel takes food from her hands, and we’ve a robin who comes through the open window to watch while Tess washes up. He likes a bit of arrowroot biscuit.’ He paused. ‘You won’t tell anybody, will you? I’m going to see Molly myself. It has to come from me.’
She squeezed his hand. ‘I think you know the answer to that one, Mr Compton.’
‘Don. It’s Gordon, but I don’t like it.’ A slight smile touched his lips. ‘When I’m in real trouble with the wife, she screams out my full name. Gets my attention every time.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Sounds like my kind of woman, Don. Now, listen. Write your phone number on that bit of paper. Give it to me, then go home and sort out her bloody braising steak or whatever it is. The minute there’s any change in her condition, I’ll phone you. You have got a phone?’
He nodded, wrote down the number, thanked her, left the sandwiches, but drained the lemonade glass.
The kids were outside eating chips from paper. ‘They wouldn’t let us in with chips,’ Sean complained. ‘How is she?’
‘Asking about her steak when she woke. But she’s still in the recovery room. We’ve to go home. Lucy, her nurse, will phone us as soon as there’s any change. Come on. No point hanging round here all day when there’s nothing we can do.’
‘What can we do at home?’ Anne-Marie asked.
Don touched his daughter’s arm. ‘We can free up three chairs in that waiting room for a start. What would Tess do if I became ill? She’d look after you, and visit me once I was on a ward. You and your brother have been at the top of our list since you were born. She would take you home and wait for the phone to ring.’ He thanked God for making Tess mither till she got her phone. She wasn’t keeping up with the Joneses; she was setting the pace, determined to overtake the Joneses, the Smiths and any others who thought they were ahead.
They got in the car. She’d be wanting a better vehicle once she left hospital. Oh yes, she would demand a prize after her ordeal. She was a delicious woman, a good housekeeper, keeper of the Book of Knowledge, which she had written herself, good at her part-time jobs. But she remained slightly greedy and selfish due to deprivation at a very young age. Yet she was so damned desirable. Fibroids and endo-something-orother. Not cancer, not like his poor old mother, and thank God for that.
‘Will she be all right, Dad?’
‘Yes, Anne-Marie. A woman who wakes from anaesthesia and demands that someone saves her steak is not at death’s door. St Peter wouldn’t know what to do with her. She’d be polishing harps, haloes and golden staircases, setting mousetraps and feeding squirrels. I mean, we’ve had her for years, and can we manage her?’
‘No,’ chorused the passengers.
At home, Don positioned himself on the third stair so that he would be near the telephone shelf. Anne-Marie busied herself with her version of high tea. She used tray cloths, but drew the line at doilies. Doilies were for if the queen visited or for high days and holidays. The doorbell sounded, and she fled through the hall to answer it, closing the inner door behind her.
Don stared at the phone, willing it to ring. Not with bad news, of course. If it rang within the next half-hour, Tess would be all right. Why was he playing stupid, childish games? If it didn’t ring in the next half-hour, would his wife be dead? ‘Come on, Lucy. Talk to me. Don’t leave me dangling like a fly in a web.’
Anne-Marie returned. She leaned against the inner door, the one that was guilty of attacking Tess’s panelling. It needed a rubber stopper. ‘He wanted to know how Mam was, said he saw the ambulance.’
‘Who did?’
‘John Lennon.’ She squeezed in next to her dad. ‘You know what?’
‘What what? Or should it be which what?’
‘It’s not the right day for stupid jokes. He
’s just an ordinary lad. Mark’s better-looking than him.’
‘What did you think he was? The one person in the world who doesn’t need toilet paper?’
‘Dad, don’t be vulgar. He’s going places.’
‘Yes, the dole for a start.’
Anne-Marie awarded her father a look fit to strip paint. ‘You old people don’t understand, do you? He’s got it.’
‘Got what? Measles, scarlet fever, a bad cold?’ Why wouldn’t the bloody phone ring? His daughter was wagging her finger at him now. She became more like her mother with every day that passed.
‘He’s gifted. So’s Paul. We aren’t all stuck with Judy Garland over the flipping rainbow. I am going to make tea.’ She jumped to her feet and stalked off.
Don made a note about rubber stoppers. If he saved the panelling from further abuse, Tess would come home fit and well. Underneath the rubber stoppers, he wrote Bookcase. She wasn’t an avid reader these days, but she’d be pleased if her house looked as if it contained educated folk. New ironing board and Chanel 5 joined the list. He needed a bloody head doctor. How could writing lists help Tess get home safe and well?
Anne-Marie stood in front of him once more, arms folded, foot tapping. ‘Our Sean’s brewed the tea, and that’s a miracle in itself, because he never lifts a finger in the house. Get through there, Dad. We’re all worrying, all feeling a bit sick. Would Mam let you eat on the stairs near her new wallpaper? She’d have your guts for garters and your hair for cushion stuffing.’
‘I’m waiting to hear.’
‘So are we, but we know that staring at a phone won’t make it ring.’
His little girl was a woman. In the absence of her mother, she stepped up to the plate and coped. Even if she married young, she would make a good job of it as long as she landed the right man. ‘You’re special,’ he said.
The Liverpool Trilogy Page 98
