Laceys Of Liverpool

by Maureen Lee

  ‘Vicky!’ Orla shouted from across the room. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes brighter than the candles. She looked more alive than anyone else in the room, in a white satin kimono, vividly patterned, and high-heeled red shoes. Her face was heavily made up and she wore too much jewellery. ‘Give us a kiss. Everyone who comes has to give me a kiss. What would you like to drink? Micky, someone, get Vicky a drink.’

  ‘I’d like a glass of white wine, please,’ Vicky said to the young man who was Cormac’s cousin. His name was Maurice, she remembered. She went over and kissed Orla on the cheek. ‘I’ve brought you some samples of our new perfume. It’s called Tender.’

  ‘Tender is the night,’ Orla crooned. ‘Let’s try some.’ She unscrewed the tiny bottle and dabbed behind her ears. The heady scent of spring flowers mingled with the smell of melting wax. ‘Oh, it’s the gear. You and Cormac will be millionaires one day.’

  ‘You’ve given me an idea for our next one. It’s going to be more musky than this, for evenings. We could call this one Tender Mornings and the other Tender Nights. It would probably be best if we brought them out together.’

  As was her way, Vicky melted into the background and found Maurice by the door with her wine. Fion was smiling up at her from the settee. She patted the arm. ‘Sit down, Vic.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Vicky whispered. ‘Who are all these people?’

  ‘Laceys, mostly. Don’t forget, there’s fourteen of us altogether, seventeen with Bernadette and her kids, and twenty-five if you include Uncle Billy’s lot. Some people are neighbours, some are friends from school.’ Fion laughed. ‘When I was young I could never understand why our Orla was so popular. She was horrible to everyone as far as I could see, yet they all liked her. I used to be as nice as pie, but no one liked me a bit.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s not true.’

  ‘It is. It might still be true for all I know. The thing is, I don’t care any more.’

  ‘You’d never think Orla was . . .’ Vicky blushed. She’d been about to say something very tactless.

  ‘Dying?’ Fion supplied. ‘Oh, it’s all right. You can say it quite openly. We all do. Orla doesn’t mind. You’ve heard of people who make a drama out of a crisis, well that’s what Orla’s doing with knobs on. The sicker she gets, the more dramatic the crisis will get. She’s even got her stage make-up on, see! In a few months’ time we’ll all be gathered round her bed waving candles and singing hymns, and she’ll be smiling at us angelically from the pillow. She’s enjoying herself no end.’ Fion’s voice changed, became softer. ‘I don’t half admire her. I didn’t realise how much I loved her till the last few weeks. She’s got more character in her little finger than most people have in their whole body. Did you know she’s expecting a baby?’

  ‘Yes, Cormac said. It’s incredible news. And you are too – congratulations.’

  ‘Ta. Can you feel it?’

  ‘The baby?’

  ‘No, the atmosphere. The whole house is throbbing with emotion. It’s almost tangible. Every now and then I have to catch me breath.’

  ‘Yes, I think I can, feel it, that is.’ But she wasn’t part of it. Vicky felt more like an observer than a participant in the tragic, enchanted events taking place in the tiny house in Pearl Street. She wished with all her heart she were a Lacey and these people would belong to her and she to them.

  Cormac stared up at the third-floor window of the house in Camden. It was an elegant house, slightly shabby, situated on a busy road full of traffic on its way to and from the centre of London. The curtains on the window that so attracted his attention were tightly drawn against the brilliant sunshine of a lovely May morning. Perhaps Andrea was still asleep after her night out with her brute of a boyfriend. Perhaps they were both still asleep.

  He’d looked like a brute to Cormac. His name was Alex and he had a remarkably heavy build for a banker, as well as a coarse face, a rasping voice and a plummy accent. He’d hated him on the spot.

  Worst of all, Andrea hadn’t been the least bit pleased to see him. She’d actually been reluctant to let him in, turning her face away when he tried to kiss her – he’d arrived in London late afternoon the day before and had driven straight to her flat. Alex had yet to make an appearance.

  ‘I didn’t answer your letters because I didn’t want to,’ she said coldly. She wore tight black trousers and a long silky blouse. Her perfect feet were bare, the toenails painted crimson. ‘Anyway, I’ve been away for most of the time since Christmas, in the States doing a fashion shoot. We went all over the place. I didn’t find your letters till I got back last week. Did you need to send so many?’

  ‘I thought we were in love,’ Cormac stammered. ‘I thought . . .’ He stared at her lovely cold face. ‘Weren’t we?’

  ‘You may have been, darling. I certainly wasn’t.’

  ‘But you said . . .’

  ‘People say all sorts of things in the heat of passion. They don’t have to mean them.’

  ‘I did.’

  Her expression softened slightly. ‘I’m afraid I didn’t, Cormac. I thought we were just having a nice little affair to pass the time. I won’t deny that I enjoyed it. But it meant nothing.’ Her smooth brow puckered in a frown. ‘I could have sworn you felt the same, darling. You didn’t give the impression of being madly in love.’

  A key had turned in the door, and a figure in a pinstriped suit carrying a bowler hat, a brolly, and a briefcase lumbered in: Alex.

  ‘Who’s this?’ he said suspiciously – and rudely, Cormac thought.

  ‘Remember that little job I did a few months ago for a company called Lacey’s of Liverpool?’ Andrea trilled. ‘Well, this is Cormac Lacey. Cormac, meet my boyfriend, Alex Everett.’

  ‘How do you do,’ Cormac said courteously as he shook hands with a reluctant Alex who didn’t speak. ‘Let me know, won’t you, Andrea, if you’d like to do the job again? As I said, we’re launching the perfume in June.’

  ‘I’m sure I would, Cormac.’

  ‘Why doesn’t he get in touch with the agency?’ Alex growled.

  ‘Don’t be such a sourpuss, darling. It’s only natural he should approach me personally. I was best friends with Cormac and his partner, Vicky. Wasn’t I, Cormac?’

  ‘The very best,’ Cormac agreed.

  He’d left the flat, thought about driving back to Liverpool straight away, but felt too tired, so booked into a hotel nearby. He lay in bed for ages, staring impassively at the ceiling, feeling curiously empty, trying to discern what was wrong with him. Dawn was breaking by the time he fell asleep. Even so, he woke little more than an hour later, too early for breakfast. He left immediately to come and stare at Andrea’s window.

  Something in him was missing, a chemical in his brain maybe, because Andrea was right. He hadn’t been in love with her. He’d realised almost straight away, as soon as he’d left the flat, expecting to be heartbroken, but finding he didn’t care. He’d thought he was in love. He’d badly wanted to be. It was what men and women did: fall in love, get married, have children. The same thing had happened with Pol with whom he’d expected to spend the rest of his life, yet hadn’t minded too much handing over to his cousin, Maurice.

  Andrea was a shallow human being, he told himself, and if he hadn’t been so anxiously looking for a soulmate he wouldn’t have allowed himself to be so easily taken in.

  Why was he gazing at the window of this shallow human being who could well appear any minute accompanied by her brutish banker boyfriend in his bowler hat?

  Cormac had no idea. It was as if he expected the window, glinting so brightly in the sunshine, to send him back an answer, tell him what was missing.

  The thing had gone, the link that was missing, the night of his twenty-first when Aunt Cora had informed him Alice wasn’t his mam. He hadn’t been able to love anyone since then. There was a coldness in his heart. He wasn’t sure who he was any more, where he came from, precisely where he stood in the world.

  If only Vicky were ther
e and he could tell her how he felt. He could talk to Vicky about anything on earth in a way he’d never talked to anyone else. He’d never discussed what Aunt Cora had told him because he’d never felt the need. But he felt the need now. Vicky would tell him what was was wrong with him. She had answers, solutions, for every problem on earth. He urgently wanted Vicky and it would take hours to get back to St Helens when they could speak. In which case he’d telephone. There was a call box in the lobby of the hotel where he’d stayed.

  Cormac ran like the wind back to the hotel. In the lobby he emptied his pockets of change and arranged the coins in little piles on the box: pennies, sixpences, shillings. He was about to dial the factory when he remembered it wasn’t yet eight o’clock and Vicky would still be at home.

  ‘Hello.’ Her voice was quietly efficient when she answered.

  ‘Vicky, it’s Cormac.’ The words tumbled over each other. ‘I need to talk. I’m in a terrible state, Vic. There’s something wrong.’

  ‘Cormac! Have you had an accident or something? Is Andrea all right? Are you still in London?’

  ‘No to the first question, yes to the others. Oh, damn! This thing needs more coins already. Hold on a mo.’

  ‘Give me the number and I’ll ring back,’ Vicky said crisply. ‘A long-distance call will eat money as fast as you speak.’

  Cormac shoved a pile of pennies in the box, reeled off the number, put down the receiver and snatched it up again a few seconds later when it rang.

  ‘You know you asked once why I called Alice Alice?’ he said immediately, sinking down on to a black plastic chair. The long leaves of a pot plant brushed against his cheek.

  ‘I remember, Cormac. And you’re calling now, a whole year later, all the way from London, to tell me why?’

  ‘Because she isn’t me mother. Aunt Cora is. I was born the same night as Maurice and she swapped us over in the hospital.’ His voice rose to a wail. ‘Oh, Vic! I don’t know who I am. Least I do, but I’m not the person I want to be, the person I always thought I was. I’m someone else entirely.’

  There was silence from the other end of the line for quite a while as Vicky took in this startling fact. ‘Don’t be silly, Cormac,’ she said eventually. ‘You’re Cormac Lacey and you always have been. You belong to Alice. They put you in her arms in the hospital and she took you home and brought you up. As far as Alice is concerned, you’re her son.’

  ‘And as far as Auntie Cora is concerned I’m her son.’

  There was another pause, then Vicky said in a strangely puzzled voice, ‘But you can’t be.’

  ‘Yes, I can, Vic. Somehow, I believed Cora when she said she switched me and Maurice around. It’s the sort of thing she would do.’ Cormac shuddered. ‘She’s evil.’ And she was his mother!

  Then Vicky said in what Cormac called her ‘school-mistressy’ voice, ‘I’m surprised at you, Cormac. You’re supposed to be so clever. How could you not know such a basic fact?’

  ‘What are you talking about? What basic fact?’

  ‘That a brown-eyed couple can’t have blue-eyed children. It’s something to do with genes. I thought it was something everyone knew. Your Uncle Billy has brown eyes and so does your Aunt Cora – I remember noticing what a strange brown they were at your Fion’s wedding.’

  ‘Not everyone’s got a mind like an encyclopaedia, Vic,’ Cormac snapped. ‘People can’t be expected to know everything.’ He gulped. ‘Does that mean . . .?’

  ‘It means that if it’s true your aunt swapped you round with Maurice, you weren’t actually her baby to swap in the first place.’

  ‘Then whose baby am I?’ Cormac shrieked. A man had come into the lobby with a suitcase and was staring at him strangely.

  ‘Maybe the nurses got confused and put the two Lacey babies in the wrong cots in the first place,’ Vicky said sensibly. ‘Cora merely put you back in the right one.’

  ‘I’d love to believe that, Vic. Except – Mam told us this loads of times – it was hell on earth in the hospital the night I was born. There was an air raid and everyone was moved down into the cellar and back again. A woman was brought in who’d been found in the wreckage of her house about to give birth. I could belong to any bloody one.’

  The man with the suitcase clearly thought he was sharing the lobby with a lunatic. He hurried into the dining room.

  ‘Oh, Cormac, don’t think about it now. Come home. But drive carefully. We’ll talk about it tonight over dinner.’

  ‘All right, Vic.’ His voice trembled. ‘I can’t wait to see you.’

  ‘Nor me you, Cormac.’

  He replaced the receiver. Vicky had created more questions than answers, but he felt better after talking to her. In fact, he felt better all round. He sniffed. The smell of fried bacon came from the dining room and he suddenly felt very hungry. Mistakes had been made when he was born, but what did it matter after such a long time? And perhaps, you never knew, Cora had put him in the right cot after all. If so, he had much to thank her for. After he’d eaten he’d give Mam a ring; he still had plenty of change. They’d hardly spoken since she’d gone to live in Birkdale in her posh new house. Then he’d go home to Vicky.

  It made Alice feel dead peculiar to get out of bed, pull back the curtains, and be met with nothing but the sight of her own back garden and miles and miles of sky. Apart from the birds, there wasn’t a sound to be heard. She’d been used to coming face to face with a row of tightly packed houses across the street, hearing the clink of milk bottles, cars, voices as people went to work.

  Every morning she found herself leaving earlier and earlier for the hairdresser’s, coming home later and later. Pretty soon she’d be sleeping there! What would it be like in the winter? She dreaded to think.

  She missed having friends in the same street or the next one, the library and the post office being just round the corner, as well as every sort of shop a person could possibly need. Instead, she had to drive everywhere, even to Mass.

  Bernadette claimed she wasn’t giving the bungalow a chance. She came to visit and ran her fingers along the cream worktop, looked out of the window at the pretty garden where Ruth and Ian were playing, and said, ‘It’s beautiful here, Ally. You’ll soon get used to it.’

  ‘I suppose so, Bernie. I’m trying hard.’ She sniffed. Bernadette was the only person who knew she hadn’t settled in. ‘What have Cora and Billy done to me old house?’

  ‘I don’t know, luv, and I’m not likely to, am I? I can’t see them asking me inside.’ She regarded Alice sternly. ‘The trouble with you, Alice Lacey, is you’ve made a ton of money but don’t know how to enjoy it.’

  Alice sighed. ‘I’d give it away, except no one will take it. Only Orla let me buy her a car.’

  ‘Talking of Orla, how is she? I haven’t seen her for a day or so.’

  ‘Driving everybody mad, including Micky, though he loves it. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for a woman in Orla’s state to get on so many people’s nerves.’

  Maeve Adams felt the first twinge of what might have been a contraction soon after breakfast. Martin had just gone to work. She glanced at her watch, calmly made a cup of tea and waited for the next twinge. It came half an hour later and was stronger than the first. The baby was on its way!

  Glancing at her watch again, she washed the dishes and was just making the beds when a wave of pain passed through her tummy that couldn’t possibly be described as a twinge.

  She cautiously made her way downstairs, took the suitcase, already packed, out of the understairs cupboard and, in quick succession, rang for a taxi, the hospital in Southport to say she was coming, Martin at work to tell him he was about to become a father – should he be interested, that was – then her mother at the hairdresser’s. Finally she rang her sisters to let them know that the first of the four Lacey babies due to arrive that year was already on its way.

  ‘Good luck, sis,’ Orla sang. ‘As for me, I do believe me bump’s starting to show a bit.’

  In the ta
xi, she took deep breaths all the way. The driver assured her he’d once delivered a baby on the back seat, so there was no need to worry if it came early. Maeve worried all the same. The contractions were getting closer and more painful with each mile.

  ‘You look very calm.’ The nurse smiled when she walked into the hospital, the taxi driver coming behind with her case.

  ‘Well, I don’t like to make a fuss.’

  The labour was swift and very painful, but still Maeve didn’t make a fuss. She just gritted her teeth, took more deep breaths and got on with it. Her little boy was born within the hour. He weighed eight pounds, three ounces.

  ‘He’s beautiful,’ said the midwife.

  ‘All babies are beautiful,’ Maeve said serenely. ‘Can I hold him? I’ve been waiting nearly thirty-six years for this.’

  ‘Only for a minute, dear. We’ve got to get you sewn up. You need at least three stitches.’

  Maeve was propped against the pillow, her baby wrapped in a sheet and placed in her arms. He felt big and warm. He was real. He was a real, live baby, with real hands and feet and perfect little fingers, a snub nose, a tiny rosebud mouth, hardly any hair and sleepy blue eyes. And he could move. He could wave his hands and wriggle his body. He could make a noise, the sweetest sound she had ever heard, a squeaky croak. And he was hers! Maeve Adams was a mother at last. Her calm deserted her and she burst into tears, just as Martin walked into the delivery room, slightly dishevelled, his tie crooked and his usually neat hair on end.

  He stood at the foot of the bed, looked at her, then at the baby. ‘So, you’ve done it,’ he said in a voice devoid of expression.

  ‘Yes, I’ve done it, Martin. This is our son. I thought we might call him Christopher.’ Maeve wiped her eyes with the corner of the baby’s sheet. ‘Isn’t he beautiful?’

  Martin edged closer. ‘He’s got no hair.’

  ‘Lots of babies are born without hair. It’ll soon grow. Would you like to hold him?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I might drop him.’ He came closer still. ‘He doesn’t look like either of us.’