‘It’s none of them.’ Renee laughed with delight.
‘As lang’s it’s nae that Fergus Cooper.’ Maggie eyed her keenly. ‘He’s a bad lot, if ye ask me.’
‘Nobody’s asking you, and you don’t know anything about him!’ The girl had unwittingly revealed the truth by her sharp retort and wondered why her grandmother seemed so disapproving. She returned home, angry with Granny for the first time in her life. She was also annoyed because Fergus had apparently made no effort to break with her mother, which made her doubt if he’d any intention of doing it at all. Still, as he’d said, it was difficult for him, so she’d need to have patience – but not for too long. She’d wait another full week, perhaps until the Sunday after that, when the other three boarders would be away, then she would make her big announcement, calmly, quietly and simply.
‘Fergus and I are in love,’ she would say, or something like that, and let him take it from there. Roll on Sunday, the – she counted it on her fingers – 10th September 1939. It would be a date to remember.
A week before the great day, she sat down along with her mother and Fergus, to listen to Neville Chamberlain’s special broadcast at eleven o’clock. Not that she was really interested – it was probably just another warning of the impending doom which never materialised. Her mind was preoccupied with what she meant to do the following Sunday, but her mother’s sharp intake of breath made her concentrate on the final sentence.
‘Consequently, this country is at war with Germany.’ Renee was surprised, and rather indignant. What an effrontery the man had, after promising, about a year ago, that there would be ‘peace in our time’. But this couldn’t affect her plans? The British Army, the Royal Navy and the RAF, of course, would naturally be involved, but nobody else. Confident of that, she relaxed and returned to her own train of thought, to pre-live, for the umpteenth time, the excitement of openly declaring her love for Fergus, but his voice intruded on her daydream.
‘Well, it’s here.’ He sounded pleased.
Anne, looking very upset, rose to switch off the wireless.
‘It’s nothing to be happy about Fergus. Look at the lives that were lost in the last war.’
‘It’ll all be over in a few months this time.’
Feeling better, Renee closed her ears to the discussion, until, without warning, his words filtered through.
‘I wouldn’t mind joining the army . . .’
Oh, no! He couldn’t want to leave her now? She couldn’t say anything, and watched him going out after Anne had accepted his offer to cut the grass. Her mother rose in a few minutes, saying, ‘Well, I’ll have to get on with the dinner, war or no war.’
Renee was left alone, her heart aching and her brain furiously trying to cope with these new developments. If Fergus joined the army and was sent to fight the Germans, where would that leave her? She couldn’t tell her mother anything if he wasn’t there to endorse it, and he might stay away and never come back.
There was only one thing to do. It would have to be today, not next Sunday, and she’d be sure he’d return to her when the war was over. Of course, it would have to be done before Jack, Tim and Mike returned in the evening.
She pottered about in the loft until just before dinner time, tidying up drawers and folding her clothes neatly, glad that her hands had something to do. When she went down to set the table, she was convinced that now was the time. If there was any unpleasantness – she was sensible enough to realise there might be – it would all be over by the time the other three turned up. She waited until they finished their broth, then, steeling her churning stomach, she spoke as her mother rose.
‘Sit down, Mum.’ Her voice quavered a little. ‘Fergus and I want to tell you something.’ It wasn’t exactly the words she’d meant to use, but it didn’t matter, as long as she kept calm. Fergus looked rather alarmed. ‘Renee,’ he murmured.
‘Your mother doesn’t want to know about . . .’
Poor Fergus, she thought. He doesn’t know what to say, but he’d be grateful to her for helping him out, once she’d said her piece.
‘She doesn’t want to know what we’re planning for her birthday,’ he finished, lamely.
Anne looked suspiciously from him to her daughter.
‘What’s going on? My birthday’s not till December.’ She turned her attention again on the man who was now cowering rather fearfully in his chair. ‘I wasn’t born yesterday, Fergus.’
‘Don’t mind him.’ Renee was quietly amused. ‘This is a new experience for him.’
‘Yes?’ Anne barked out the word.
‘I’m in love with Fergus, Mum, and he loves me.’
It was out, at last. She’d known there would be some repercussions, but had never, in her wildest nightmare, imagined the explosion that followed.
‘You stupid little bitch!’ Anne’s eyes were blazing as she moved her white face close to Renee’s. Her hand came up, as if to strike the girl, then she turned on Fergus, slumped helplessly against his seat.
‘Tell her the truth, Fergus! Tell her you love me, and we’ve only been waiting till she found a boyfriend before we got married. Go on, tell her!’
‘Anne,’ he began, haltingly, but she was beside herself with fury, and newly kindled jealousy.
‘Tell her!’ she screamed. ‘Tell her we made love every Monday night all the winter, when she was out at her evening classes. Tell her she’s only a kid, and you laugh at her behind her back. Tell her it’s me you love!’ She was sobbing loudly now. ‘Go on, Fergus! Tell her!’
Renee’s mouth had fallen open with shock, but now she blurted out, ‘He’s made love to me every Monday. Before the classes stopped, and after, as well.’ She couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. ‘Tell my mother that, Fergus! Tell her you felt sorry for her, and you were only trying to show your gratitude for what she’d done for you. Tell her you love me!’ Her voice had risen until she was screaming as loudly as Anne.
Fergus had said only the one hesitant word since his abortive attempt to stop Renee overtaking him. He had no answer to this predicament and made to rise from the table to get away from the two distraught females, but Anne jumped up and pushed him roughly back.
‘You two-faced bugger! Who else have you been sticking it into, you bloody liar?’ He hung his head and remained silent, and Renee, who had never seen, nor heard, her mother swearing before, burst into hysterical sobs, remembering the other girl at the Bay of Nigg, who had, no doubt, also believed his seductive lies. The trouble was, he was so convincing and persuasive that any girl would have trusted him.
‘Well?’ Anne demanded again. ‘Who else?’
He lifted his head slowly. ‘I haven’t been with anybody else, Anne,’ he said earnestly. ‘Just you and Renee.’ He glanced at the girl, as if willing her to keep silent about what she’d seen on her walk with Tim and Jack.
‘So you were sorry for me, were you?’ Anne shouted. ‘A broken-down middle-aged widow, with nobody to protect her? And a fifteen-year-old virgin for afters, was that it?’
‘No, Anne, it wasn’t like that,’ he mumbled, but she didn’t let him go any further.
‘I could have you up for that – interfering with an underage girl . . . you . . . you . . .’
‘She was asking for it,’ he interrupted, before she could find a word strong enough to express her contempt. ‘I couldn’t help it, she was always after me. Writing little notes, asking me to meet her, and she wasn’t a virgin!’ His desperation made him say anything to save himself.
Anne turned on her daughter. ‘Who else have you been with, you little tramp?’
Renee sobbed even louder. ‘Nobody else, Mum, I swear to God. I was a virgin, and I’d never have let him touch me if he hadn’t said . . . He said he wanted to be first for me, so I’d always belong to him.’
Anne started pummelling the man’s head. ‘You filthy . .
. low-down . . . lying . . . beast!’ At every word, she punched him again, and he sat with his hands up, trying to shield his face.
Anne continued her vicious attack. ‘You can’t . . . find . . . anything . . . to say . . . can you . . . ?
‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Renee rose blindly and ran to the door. She hardly knew how she got up the stairs, but threw herself on top of her bed, sobbing uncontrollably.
Chapter Nine
Renee couldn’t tell how long she’d lain there, trying to shut out the noise below, her thoughts in such a turmoil she’d been afraid, for a time, that her head would split wide open. The absolute stillness now terrified her. Had her mother, in her irrational anger, murdered Fergus with a table knife? Or had Fergus stabbed her mother? She swung her legs to the floor, and crept on to the landing, her ears straining to pick up any sound. There was nothing. They surely couldn’t both be . . . unless one had killed the other, then committed suicide?
Her right foot was hovering uncertainly over the top step, when she heard the living-room door being opened and drew it back fearfully. Which one was it, and was whoever it was coming to kill her?
‘Renee, come down and listen to this.’ Anne’s voice was much calmer, but it took the horror-struck girl a full twenty seconds to obey the softly spoken command.
She entered the room in fear and trepidation, although she felt that nothing would surprise her, and her shock at seeing Fergus still sitting at the table, with his head in his hands, was all the greater – an anticlimax. She didn’t want to hear what either of them had to say.
It was Anne who set the ball rolling. ‘I told him to get out,’ she said slowly, her eyes red and swollen, ‘and he’s changed his tune. Now, Fergus, tell Renee what you’ve just told me. It might make her feel better, though I doubt it.’ He looked up, and the girl was shaken when she saw that he, too, had been weeping. ‘I’m sorry for everything,’ he began, quietly, ‘and I’m apologising to both of you.’ Renee’s stomach muscles contracted. Was this what she’d been called down to hear? A bare apology? He couldn’t honestly think he’d get off so lightly? His eyes were on her now, tortured and pleading. ‘I’m sorry for saying you weren’t a virgin, Renee, because you were. I must have been mad, I didn’t know what I was saying. I truly love you, but . . . I love your mother, too. You’ll maybe think it’s impossible to love two people at once, but it’s true.’ He gulped, and transferred his gaze to Anne, begging her to believe him.
She sighed hopelessly. ‘It sounds like the baying of a cornered fox to me, but you’ll have to make up your own mind, Renee. Do you think he’s telling the truth this time?’
‘I don’t know,’ the girl faltered. ‘It’s so . . .’
‘It’s the truth, just the same.’ Fergus looked from one to the other. ‘I fell in love with you first, Anne. Maybe because I was grateful to you for taking me in, like I told Renee, but it soon developed into real love, and I needed you desperately. I didn’t make love to you just for kicks, I really wanted you.’
He shrugged his shoulders pathetically. ‘But you were growing up, Renee, and more beautiful by the day, and I began to love you, too, and started meeting you after your classes, until I had to make love to you, as well. I thought I was safe enough – you’d never tell each other what was going on – and I could go on having you both.’ His head dropped again.
Anne rested her elbows on the table. ‘Needing you, wanting you, making love to you, having you – that’s not all love means.’
‘I love you – both of you,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I want to be near you as much as I can, but . . . sex is part of love, for me, anyway. Don’t send me away, Anne, please!’ She looked at his bowed head for a few seconds. ‘I want to believe you,’ she whispered. ‘I want to, because I loved you, and because I don’t like feeling I’ve been made a fool of. Renee probably thinks the same, but the whole thing’s impossible. I can’t share a lover with my daughter. It’s unthinkable, obscene.’ She paused briefly. ‘I’ll let you stay on here till you find somewhere else to go, but only on condition that you promise never to touch either of us again, or say anything that . . .’ She straightened up. ‘It’s the only sensible way to deal with it, and, Renee, I’m trusting you not to go behind my back, either.’
‘I won’t.’ The girl found her voice again. ‘I don’t want to have anything more to do with him.’
‘I promise I’ll never do anything out of place again.’ Fergus met Anne’s eyes steadily.
‘That’s settled, then.’ Anne leaned back, still rather shaky.
‘Remember, Fergus, it’s only till you find other lodgings, and we’d better not say anything to the other boys about why you’re leaving. They’d only think we’re all mad.’ She swallowed, then gave a short, dry laugh. ‘My God, maybe we are, at that.’
We must be, Renee thought. After the terrible things he’d done, he was getting off scot-free . . . well, almost.
A vestige of his old, charming smile lurked at the edges of the man’s mouth when he lifted his head again. ‘Thank you, Anne . . . Mrs Gordon, but if I promise to behave myself, wouldn’t you . . .’
‘No!’
‘I swear I’ll never . . .’
‘You won’t get the chance,’ Anne said firmly.
His shoulders dropped dramatically, as he stood up. ‘All right. I’ll try to find new digs as soon as I can.’ He walked to the door, turning, before he went out, to say, ‘I won’t be in for tea, but I’ll be home . . . back at bedtime.’
Aware that her mother was holding her breath until the outside door shut quietly, Renee bowed her head as Anne murmured, ‘What a mess.’
With what remained of her heart, Renee wished that she could be transported away from this terrible house; away from her mother – her horrible, despicable mother, whose very existence had turned all those wonderful dreams into nightmares – but she couldn’t move. It was as if she were riveted to her now, her legs and feet paralysed, her innards frozen, her brain, unfortunately, still fiercely active. If only she’d left things as they were, but how could she have known what had been going on behind her back? She should have been warned by what she’d heard when she listened at the dining-room door, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it and Fergus had laughed away her fears. What a liar he was. How could he have looked her in the face and sworn that it was all on her mother’s side, when he’d been . . . oh, it didn’t bear thinking about – but she couldn’t get it out of her head. Fergus and her mother!
Jack had been right about him – and Granny . . . and Sheila Daun. They’d all warned her and she hadn’t listened. It was all her own fault, which made it a thousand times worse. If only she could stand up now and walk out, calmly and with some dignity, but she couldn’t. And where would she go in any case? She couldn’t afford to go into lodgings, she couldn’t go to Granny, she’d be shocked and disgusted if she ever learned what had been going on.
A flood of self-pity welled up in Renee then, and she glanced up to find her mother regarding her with eyes filled with . . . not hatred, nor pity, but – sorrow? Well, it was too late to be sorry.
‘We have to speak Renee,’ Anne said softly. ‘Even when . . . Fergus leaves, we’ll still have to stay together, in spite of what’s happened. We can’t just paper over the cracks.’
Her head down again, the girl muttered, ‘I don’t want to speak to you ever again.’
‘I don’t blame you, Renee,’ Anne went on. ‘He could twist any woman round his little finger, but I was old enough – I shouldn’t have been taken in by his blarney. They say there’s no fool like an old fool, but I wouldn’t believe a single word he said, now.’
Renee kept silent, praying that her mother would take the hint and leave her in peace, but Anne was not to be deterred.
‘I should have suspected you’d been going out with him, when you were supposed to be with Phyllis Barclay, but it never crossed my min
d that you didn’t have the money to be going to the pictures every week – that’s how much a blind fool I was. I knew you were attracted to him and I knew he didn’t do anything to stop you, but I never dreamt he’d been . . .’
Her head jerking up, the girl burst out, ‘And I never dreamt he’d been carrying on with you. It makes me sick, just thinking about it – you and him? He told me he loved me, and now I find out he’d been telling you he . . .’
‘We’ve been a pair of bloody fools. We’d better get this cleared up. We’ll leave the rest of our dinner till teatime – I don’t suppose you feel any more like eating than I do. You know, if your father had been alive, he’d have killed Fergus Cooper for what he’s done to us.’
If her father had still been alive, Renee thought, bitterly, this situation would never have arisen. Her mother wouldn’t have needed Fergus to make love to her, and he’d have been . . . She came to an abrupt halt. He wouldn’t have been lodging here at all, and she would never have known him.
Gathering up dishes noisily, her mother said, ‘I could do with a cup of tea, though. How about you?’
‘Yes, please. Er . . . Mum, I’m sorry it was my fault that everything came out like that today.’ Renee lifted the rest of the dirty crockery and followed Anne into the scullery.
‘It had to come out sooner or later, so it was as well to come out today and I’m sorry for the things I said to you. I’m not in the habit of using language like that, but it shows up my lower-class beginnings.’
An awkward restraint fell between them while they washed up then had their cup of tea, each of them regretting what they’d said that day, until Renee felt that she must get out of the house. Where would she go, that was the problem? She couldn’t go to Woodside, because her Granny would see straight away that something was wrong, and Maggie was the last person Anne would want to know about her stupidity.
‘Renee,’ her mother sounded apologetic, ‘if you’ve nothing else to do, maybe you’d do a bit of weeding in the back garden. I’d have done it myself, but there’s two pairs of sheets needing to be turned, for they’re getting thin in the middle.’
Monday Girl Page 12
