The Liverpool Trilogy

by Ruth Hamilton

  It’s nice to be able to say that I’ve been. But coming back home was great. Too many people in London for my liking. They travel under the ground, too, all packed like animals, squashed together beneath the pavements. It’s no way to live. That’s what Dad says, anyway.

  The sister known as Vera placed Seamus Walsh’s work in a large cardboard envelope. He could keep all his pieces in there. Soon, he would go to the grammar school, but she intended to give him a head start. With one or two others, he would be offered advanced lessons in English Language. If he didn’t become a writer of some sort, she would eat her habit, wimple included.

  Seventeen

  Molly was married. Don chuckled to himself when he read the notice in the paper. She needed happiness, closeness and a good marriage, and he hoped she would be blissful, since she deserved nothing but the best. With her dogs, her ukulele and her tropical fish, she was one of the most wonderfully eccentric people he’d met. Singing in pubs, performing at birthday parties, weddings and the occasional bar mitzvah, she was perpetually on the go. Her energy had been contagious, and she’d shown him how to be truly alive at a time when Tess had appeared not to want to know him.

  He would never forget Molly, partly because his love for her had been real, mostly because of all she had done for him and his family. This lovely house, his wonderful born-again wife, the treatment Tess was undergoing – all these things had been made possible by a generous, big-hearted woman. He owed her everything, yet he knew she would never accept repayment even if he ever found the ability to repay.

  Tess, armed with a bright yellow duster, entered the front room. He could tell that she wanted to talk, and that she was trying to hide behind the duster. What was she up to this time? The next few minutes would tell, he supposed. Now that he’d learned how to almost manage her, life was good. Oh well, let her get on with it. Like an electric kettle, she took a little while to reach boiling point, though she didn’t overspill as frequently as she once had.

  Never mind. The job with Injun Joe was going well, Sean and his best friend were trying to establish their own garage business on the Dock Road, while Anne-Marie, now a fully qualified hairdresser who had almost recovered from Quarry Men fever, seemed to be edging towards marriage with Mark. So taken all round, life was good. Except for … yes, she was going to speak.

  ‘I don’t want to go. I’m not ready for it. It’s all too soon and too complicated.’ Ah, so Tess was in a darker mood today. She was trying to put her foot down, and she knew as well as he did that she was in the wrong. Yet in a way, he found her more endearing when she was acting all Contrary Mary. Without her unpredictability, her odd little ways with wild animals, those sudden smiles that lit up a whole room, life would have been considerably duller.

  ‘I’m not doing it,’ she said sternly. ‘They can reunify themselves without any help from me.’

  Don tutted. ‘But it’s what you’ve been working towards. Look, we can go, sit at one side, then come home. If you don’t want to get too involved—’

  ‘And what would be the point of that? It’s supposed to be a Riley reunion, and if I don’t want to join in I shouldn’t go. Nobody can make me go.’

  He could. He could and he would. ‘You must go. Dr Banks said you ought to go. In the weeks you’ve been seeing him, you’ve come on in leaps and bounds. And that young woman’s going to be there, the one who had a single room while you were both in the Women’s. She looks like your sister, but she isn’t. Joe found out she’s not one of your caravan crew. Tess, knowledge is power. Take hold of it, shake it, see what falls out.’

  Tess carried on dusting furiously while Don kept an eye on her. All she seemed to achieve was the stirring up of particles which settled elsewhere. Real dusting involved a slightly damp cloth and concentration, so it was plain that she was simply working out her fears on the furniture. ‘Tess, I love you to bits.’

  ‘I know that.’ She flicked an angry cloth at a chiming mantel clock that had been a birthday present from Don.

  ‘So would I set you wrong? Would I ask you to do something that might hurt you and send you hurtling back into nightmares?’

  Tess sighed and sat down. ‘No, you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me, and vice versa. I’d have been much happier to spend the cash on your knee, as you well know.’ She paused, nervous fingers plucking at her yellow duster. ‘It’s you. You’re the reason I’m better, because you’re always there in the night. That’s as important as a mad doc droning on about my mother, my heightened sense of guilt, and the brothers and sisters. Then, of course, we have the buckets.’

  Don managed not to smile. ‘Buckets? What the blood and sand have buckets to do with anything?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Mind, you’d miss having a bucket if you needed to mop a floor, Tess.’

  She threw the duster at him. It missed and draped itself unbeautifully over a Wedgwood dish. ‘We all have a bucket,’ she told him sternly.

  ‘Some have more than one,’ Don replied. ‘The rich might have several to match different rooms.’

  ‘These are buckets you can’t see, Gordon. Oh, I wish you’d behave and listen. Did you read in the paper that Molly got married?’

  Here she went again, off at a delightful tangent. It was up to him to guide her back to the path. ‘I did. She used to sell buckets, now I come to think. Builders’ buckets. Great big buckets for great big builders, they were.’

  Tess stared through the window. A squizzle was pinching bird food again. Sometimes, the creatures you loved could be very annoying. There wasn’t much bird food left, as she stopped feeding everything in spring, yet squizzles still knocked at the door, didn’t they? Birds adapted. But squizzles and Tess weren’t good at change. Hungry little rodents, squirrels were, so she understood them very well. Even when they weren’t hungry, they wanted food to save for later. How well she remembered that. ‘Little thieves,’ she said quietly. ‘Poor birds hardly get a look-in.’

  ‘Buckets?’ he reminded her.

  ‘Some are bigger than others,’ she said.

  He bit back a quip about a child’s seaside bucket and spade.

  ‘They fill up,’ she continued. ‘A big bucket fills more slowly than a little bucket even if the stuff that fills it pours at the same rate.’

  Don was with her so far.

  ‘People with little buckets have to empty them more often to make room. When a bucket overflows, a person can go to pieces. I have to keep emptying my bucket by forgiving myself. So we’re paying fifteen quid an hour for him to ask me how full my invisible bucket is. Daft. It’s my opinion that he should see a psychiatrist.’

  ‘Put your coat on.’

  She stared at him aghast. ‘The children will be home soon. I’ve chops to grill and the vegetables want peeling and—’

  ‘They aren’t children, love. Sean wears more oil than a tanker carries, and Anne-Marie can cook. They’ve both got legs, so they can walk to the chippy. Now, they’re a couple of bucketfuls you can empty immediately. They aren’t babies any more. With luck and good management, they’ll be making you some more babies in a few years. You’ll be a lovely granny.’

  ‘Shut up. I’m a young woman.’

  ‘A beautiful young woman,’ he said.

  What was he after, she wondered while ordering him to write a note for the offspring. It wasn’t sex, because he didn’t lead up to that with fuss and compliments. That was their own little world, their private kingdom. Once in the boudoir he had created for her, they became different people.

  No, he was planning something, and she guessed that he had already begun the spadework. She would arrive at the Riley reunion hog-tied and in a wheelbarrow if necessary. And she trusted him to know what was good for her; despite her own doubts, she knew he was probably right. He was usually right, often annoyingly so.

  Obedient in coat and gloves, she stood in the front-room doorway. ‘Where are we going?’ she demanded.

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Go
rdon!’ She stamped a size five foot. ‘Where to?’

  He shrugged. ‘I’ll let the car decide. Let’s have a mystery tour, eh?’

  The car chose Southport. The sedate, Victorian resort was so in control of itself that even holidaymakers were quiet in the summer.

  But this was not summer, and the days were still short. Don parked on the coastal road while the sun put himself to bed. ‘You see?’ He took her hand. ‘The sun’s gone. And look what he’s left behind just to remind us that he was here today. Colours. And with him goes today, and the colours fade until this day becomes yesterday. He’ll be back tomorrow, and we’ll call that today. All new. Every day is new.’

  ‘Could be cloudy.’

  ‘But the sun will still be there, love, supervising everything. We have to carry on into tomorrow; it’s what we do – we follow the sun’s sense of order. And soon, very soon, you can take hold of one special day, an important occasion. You can walk up to them and ask why they took your bloody dinner, and how dare they remain alive when they starved you halfway to death. Empty your bucket on their heads. Do unto others what they have done unto you. Steal their sausage rolls and ask how they like it. Better still, throw their food on the floor and jump on it.’ He grinned impishly.

  ‘I couldn’t do that.’

  He shrugged. ‘Then I’ll do it for you.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘So your bucketful of crap is never going to land on their heads?’

  ‘Language, Don.’

  She often used a few choice words in the throes of passion, but he decided not to mention that fact. A man had to take his pleasure where he could. ‘You were starved by your brothers and sisters. Don’t tell me off for swearing, but this is your chance to kick seven shades of shit out of them.’

  A short silence followed. ‘But they were children, too. They were probably as hungry as I was.’

  ‘Then it’s your chance to forgive them. In my opinion, forgiveness would leave your bucket bone dry. It’s facing them at all that’s your problem, because you walked out and left them to it. They had to look after your mother. So a lot of it’s guilt mixed up with the anger. You do know I met some of them the day I went out with Joe?’

  Tess nodded.

  ‘Decent people, ordinary people.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘We didn’t let anyone know who I was or where you were, because I told Joe just as much as he needed to know. Tess?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The knife sharpener – remember him? That’s one of your brothers. Luckily, he didn’t recognize me.’

  ‘So Jack the Knife’s my brother?’

  ‘He is. There’s at least one builder, a postman, a greengrocer, two hairdressers—’

  ‘And a partridge in a pear tree?’

  ‘We never found one of those. But you’ve at least two nephews at university.’ He waited for a response, but none came.

  ‘Tess, there were times, you see, when I felt I’d never have made it without our Ian. I know I don’t see him often with the hours he works and him living in Chester, but knowing my brother’s somewhere is enough. You need to make them real, sweetheart. They’re there, they exist, they’re people. Whether or not you see them, they’re part of you. Whether or not you like them, the fact is—’

  ‘Shut up, Gordon. The fact is that if you carry on carrying on, I’ll walk home.’

  ‘Good luck with that – it’s well over fifteen miles, so it would take you till next Tuesday. Behave yourself. I’m treating you to a meal.’

  ‘I’m not dressed.’

  Don laughed. ‘If you weren’t dressed, we could fulfil a dream of mine. Sex in the sand dunes.’

  ‘Too cold,’ was her quick response. ‘You’d shrivel like a rollmop herring.’ Tess, when tottering on the brink of coarseness, was a delight. ‘And sand is hard,’ she added.

  ‘How do you know that?’

  She turned to face him. ‘Picnics. And it gets in your sandwiches. Three bites of a ham sarnie, and you feel as if you’ve been to a sadistic dentist.’ She nodded. ‘It gets everywhere. Everywhere.’

  He mused aloud about restaurants, wondered if anyone served rollmop herrings, until she dug him in the ribs. ‘Take me home. We’ll call at the chip shop and you can keep your herrings.’

  ‘One condition, Tess.’

  ‘I’ll go, I’ll go. Just stop mithering on at me. Take me home, and I promise I’ll go.’

  His face was a picture of manufactured innocence. ‘Go? Go where?’

  ‘The Riley reunion. I’ll be good, and I’ll go, and I won’t kill anybody.’

  ‘Oh, right. Fair enough, I suppose, though what I really meant was … oh, never mind.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you now, Don?’

  ‘That wasn’t my condition. I’ll take you home if you’ll follow me to the kasbah.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘The sand dunes.’

  She pulled his ear. Hard. Well, it was no more than he deserved.

  The letter, spread out and almost untouched, sat on the kitchen table between Mr and Mrs Roy Baxter. Rosh stared at it as if in possession of manufacturing specifications for the Holy Grail, terrified of touching it, fearful for its integrity, doubting its very existence. How on earth had her mother managed this?

  ‘So it all happened while we were on our honeymoon.’ This statement from Roy was surplus to requirements.

  ‘I don’t know how to feel,’ Rosh said. ‘This is my baby, and she’s too young. But I’m so proud of her I could burst, but I …’

  ‘You can’t hold her back.’

  ‘Yes, I know. It means …’ She rose and walked to the window. Out there, her children had played, had learned to tolerate each other, to interact with visiting playmates, and to bear the inevitable tumbles that accompanied early years. ‘It means she knows how good she is. It means I lose her too soon and too suddenly. It means my mother took her to London for the interview without telling me. Where the hell is Marylebone Road, anyway?’

  Roy glanced at the letter. ‘Northwest London.’

  ‘Oh, well, that makes everything so much clearer, doesn’t it? Then there’s the vicar. I can understand her turning down the idea of a place with one of the tutors, and I know she wouldn’t want the room offered by those nuns, but a vicar? She’ll be living with a Protestant, a Cromwellian, one of Henry the Eighth’s lot. No better than heathens.’

  Roy puffed out his cheeks and blew. ‘Catholics have to start making room. The same applies to Protestants. It’s as if everybody goes through life reading just the one book from cover to cover. A second book with a different opinion does no harm. Look, Rosh, I don’t want to argue, but you don’t own Philly, and she doesn’t own her gift, because it has to be shared. If Shakespeare had buried his pen, if Turner had decided to paint his bedroom instead, if Beethoven had decided to be a sailor or a butcher – what then?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t care. I wasn’t their mother, was I?’

  ‘A child like Philly needs input while she’s young enough. She absorbs things so quickly – remember the viola?’

  Rosh sank into an old rocking chair that used to be Anna’s. She missed her mother, but not enough to want her back. One newly-wed couple in a house was quite enough, thank you very much. ‘I’m frightened, Roy.’

  ‘I know you are, love. I’m not exactly on the edge of my seat with joy. But she won’t be the only youngster at the Royal Academy. There are other prodigies. And she’ll still go to ordinary lessons as well.’

  Rosh felt as if some giant had ripped out her heart and used a hammer to batter it. Kieran would go relatively soon; he had worked out that Edinburgh was the best seat of learning for doctors, though because he was English and without doctors in the family he was mildly worried about his perceived suitability. Alice? Who knew? She was an all-rounder who kept her distance even now, preferring the company of older people to that of her peers. But a series of assessments had ruled out any form of autism, so she
was within the bounds of normality, whatever they were.

  Roy sought a change of subject. ‘This reunion? Are we going?’

  ‘Of course we’re going; they’re my father’s family. And when the time comes, we’re on puddings. I got a letter from that Injun Joe person. He said all culinary offerings of the sweet variety would be welcome, but the Scouse Alley people are doing the savoury side of the buffet. So apple tarts, custard tarts, fancies, maids of honour – the usual mixed bag. It’ll be a riot. Some daft young beggar’s booked a rock band, then there’s a ceilidh, some Irish dancers—’

  ‘And Philly.’

  Rosh shrugged. ‘She’ll play if the piano’s good enough. That’s if they have a piano. No, let her be a child, let her meet other people her own age. Maybe she’ll see a future up here and decide to stay. I mean, what if she’s not up to scratch for the Royal flaming Academy? She might not make it as a concert pianist. How will she feel if she isn’t better than the best? And how do we know this vicar won’t try to convert her once he’s got her in that church of his?’

  Roy wasn’t about to repeat himself. If Philly could make a living via music, the thing she loved most, that would be enough, surely? She didn’t need to be a concert performer; her main aim for now was to progress to a church organ with several manuals, dozens of stops, many pedals and a life of its own till reined in by a maestro. The vicar’s church had a great organ, but Rosh didn’t want her daughter learning anything at all in a Church of England establishment. ‘Rosh, there are evil priests and nasty nuns. There are also some bloody good vicars and some marvellous atheists. It’s about music, not about a view of God. She can go to war with a real monster in that church. The organ’s no piano, no walk in the park. But she wants to get to grips with it.’

  ‘She is too young for London. They’ll keep the place till she’s eighteen, surely? If she wants to mess about with a church organ, she can find one in Liverpool.’ Rosh left the room.