‘I don’t see why not,’ Brenda said. Lynn liked her more than ever.
Chapter 16
‘Where’s Brenda?’ Anthony asked when Lynn walked in with Simon.
‘She went straight home. You didn’t think she was going to bring her wedding dress here, do you?’ Lynn answered, giving Alec a regretful smile as she sank into an armchair. ‘You two passed your time in the pubs, I suppose.’
‘Not all of it,’ Alec protested. ‘We went to the gents’ outfitters to get sized up for morning suits.’
‘Morning suits? With coat tails? And where are you going to wear them, after the wedding?’
‘In Rayners . . . why not?’ Anthony laughed.
‘We’re not buying, only hiring, ’cause there isn’t time to get ’em made to measure,’ Alec said.
‘It didn’t take us five minutes. We didn’t want to waste good drinking time.’
‘I thought you had no money?’
‘I’ve got a bit in the bank, ’cause I was never much of a drinker, before I met your brother. I used to save my money,’ Alec said.
Lynn’s eyes lit up and she gave him her most caressing look. ‘Ooh, a bloke with money in the bank!’
He laughed. ‘Aye, I’m a good catch.’
‘Has my dad been?’ Simon demanded.
Anthony couldn’t keep the look of disgust off his face. ‘No, and he’s not likely to, while I’m at home.’
Alec shook his head. ‘Lay off, it’s his dad.’
The phone rang, as if on cue. Anthony lifted the receiver and looked more than ever as if there were a bad smell somewhere. ‘Well, speak of the devil. You’d better take it, Lynn.’
‘Hello? Is that you, Lynn? My car’s in for repair,’ Graham said. ‘There’s no chance you can bring Simon to my mother’s, is there?’
‘No, sorry. I’m going out. I’ll leave him at our Margaret’s, and you can pick him up from there.’
‘That’s not very convenient. I don’t know how the buses run.’
‘Walk it, then.’
‘That would take forever, and besides, it’s a long way back for a four-year-old.’
‘Not much further than me walking him to your mother’s from here, is it? But you needn’t bother taking him at all, if it’s too much trouble. Take him next weekend, instead,’ Lynn said. ‘Leave him here while his uncle’s home.’
‘I don’t want to stop here! I want my dad to come!’ Simon howled.
‘I don’t want to leave him there. My mum and dad want to see him,’ Graham protested.
‘Lynn!’ Alec said.
‘Hold on,’ said Lynn, and covered the mouthpiece.
‘I’ll have to go back to my digs to get ready to go out,’ Alec said. ‘I’ll take Simon to his grandmother’s in the taxi.’
Lynn nodded, and passed a slightly altered message to Graham. ‘All right, we’ll send him to your mother’s in a taxi, then.’
‘Fishermen throwing their money about again, I suppose,’ Graham said.
Lynn’s hackles rose. ‘Well, they’ve earned it, haven’t they?’ she snapped. ‘I suppose they can spend it how they want; and if it saves you the trouble of coming to fetch him you’ve got nothing to complain about.’
‘Who’s complaining? I’m not complaining.’
‘Right, then,’ Lynn said.
‘Right, then,’ Graham echoed, as she replaced the receiver. She lifted it again to add something she’d forgotten, then turned to Simon and gave him the message instead.
‘Tell your dad to take you to Auntie Margaret’s after tea, Simon. Tell him he can take you in a taxi if he’s got no car.’
‘I’ve often wondered what my life would have been like if I’d never met Graham,’ Lynn said, in the pub that evening.
‘It would be great. There’d have been no Graham in the way, and we could have had a double wedding with Brenda and Anthony,’ Alec said.
‘I’d probably never have met you at all. I had ideas about travelling the world on the cruise liners as a ship’s nurse. That’s what I really wanted to do, before Graham got in the way. That’s why I went into nurse training in the first place.’
‘You’d have had the glamorous end of a life on the ocean wave, then.’ Alec said. ‘You’d have been mixing Alka-Seltzer for the idle rich, while we were hauling nets in, or sleeping in the fo’c’s’le with a dozen other deckies.’
Anthony gave a wry smile. ‘Oh, aye, I remember it well, the fo’c’s’le. The first day I went to sea was on an old coal-burner. The bosun said: go and drop your seabag in the fo’c’s’le. So I said: where’s the fo’c’s’le? Forrard, under the hatch, barmpot, he says. Then I couldn’t find the hatch, so he had to come with me, and he wasn’t best pleased. I only realised where it was when he shifted the ropes off it. So he yanked the lid up and I dropped my seabag down and it seemed to drop a mile. Get down there and find yourself a bunk, if you can manage that, he says, so I climbed down and there were two rows of bunks, three high on either side, and a metal pipe down the middle for the anchor chain. All the bottom bunks were taken so I had to climb up to one of the top ones.’
‘Provide your own bedding, as well,’ Brenda said, looking at Anthony.
‘Be fair. They give us a straw mattress,’ Alec said.
‘Complete with vermin,’ said Anthony.
‘And you know why the bunks have got wooden sides when you get underway. You get thrown all over the place.’
‘Your mammy never rocked you like a trawler does. It’s worse than a fairground swing boat.’
‘Ah, but when you’re steaming home with a good catch, and you get the lights on and the stove going, and you maybe have a game of cards, and all the old ’uns start spinning their yarns – it’s magic. Really, sheer magic,’ Alec said, a faraway look in his eyes.
‘Aye, after you’ve slept for two solid days after ten days of fishing and gutting for eighteen hours a day. They tell some brilliant stories, though.’
‘You must wish you were back in the fo’c’s’le, then, instead of in your own nice private cabin,’ Lynn said. ‘You ought to ask to be put back to deckhand.’
‘Oh, no!’ Alec shook his head, jerked out of his nostalgia. ‘You can never go back, you’ve got to go forward. But it was good . . . some of it.’
‘That’s the thing about looking back,’ Lynn said. ‘You only remember the best bits. The rotten bits disappear down the memory hole.’
‘Not with me, they don’t,’ Alec laughed. ‘I soon made my mind up I wanted to be on the bridge, nice and warm under my glass sou’wester with the cook bringing me pots of tea every half an hour. Anyway, I’m glad you didn’t go to sea.’
‘I’m glad I didn’t. I wouldn’t have our Simon if I had, and I love him to bits.’
‘Aye, he’s a great little lad,’ Alec nodded. ‘Keen to see his dad, wasn’t he? I used to be just the same.’
‘Shame his dad’s a waste of space, that’s all,’ Anthony said.
Conversation stopped when the landlady began a vigorous tinkling with a spoon inside a wineglass, calling for hush.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . .’
Lynn didn’t catch the name. A local lad strummed a few chords on his guitar and opened with ‘I’m so lonesome, I could cry . . .’ She felt Alec’s breath on her ear and heard a sly whisper: ‘Your mother’ll have gone out with her friends by now, won’t she?’
She turned towards the most coaxing blue eyes that had ever met her gaze, and laughed. He meant to get her into bed, and the thrill she felt at the thought almost knocked her off guard. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ she said, ‘but if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking, we’d better not.’
‘Why not? We’re getting married as soon as you get your divorce.’
‘Are we? I don’t remember saying yes.’
‘You didn’t say no, so that must mean yes. Come on, Lynn – why not?’
She was sorely tempted, but she held back. ‘Because I’m divorcing my hu
sband on the grounds of adultery, Alec!’
‘Come on, we won’t see each other again for three weeks, after tomorrow. Why shouldn’t we make the most of the time we’ve got?’
Lynn wavered.
‘We might not get the chance again for months. Come on, live dangerously,’ he urged, with a pleading look in his eyes.
‘It would be just my luck for us to bump into Graham on the way,’ she said, ‘or for my mother to come back, and catch us.’
‘Your mother’s usually back late when she’s out with her pals. You told me that yourself. And Graham never comes near this end of town.’
‘He’ll be coming to bring Simon down to Margaret’s . . .’
‘We’ll take a taxi. He won’t see us.’
‘The taxi man will, though. I’m pretty well known round here and I don’t want them blabbing about me taking men back to an empty house!’
‘I’m not men! We’ll walk it, then, and if we bump into Graham I’m Anthony’s shipmate, that’s all, just walking you back to your mother’s . . .’
‘What liars you men are!’
‘Come on,’ he coaxed.
Her resistance collapsed. They slid out of the pub before the song was finished, and walked back to Boulevard, Lynn’s pulse quickening as they drew near to the house.
‘She’s left the kitchen light on. I hope she’s not in,’ she murmured.
‘We’ll soon find out.’
The door was locked. She inserted her key, but it wouldn’t turn. It had been locked from the inside, and the key left in the lock.
‘Hold on!’ Nina called.
A minute later the door opened to reveal an effeminate-looking chap of about her mother’s age, and her mother just beyond him, reaching into the kitchen cabinet.
‘I’ve had to come home,’ Nina said. ‘Toothache! It’s killing me!’ She sat down at the kitchen table and took the cap off a tiny brown bottle, releasing the aroma of clove oil. She held the dropper steady and carefully squeezed some onto a tooth. ‘Does my face look swollen?’
‘No, not that I can see,’ Lynn said.
‘It feels it. I shouldn’t be surprised if I’ve got an abscess under that, the gyp it’s giving me. I’ll have to go to the dentist’s tomorrow.’ She screwed the lid back on the bottle, and then sat back, gazing at them suspiciously. ‘Anyway, what are you doing here?’
‘Alec’s lost his wallet somewhere. We’re just checking he didn’t leave it here,’ Lynn said, looking inquiringly at the stranger.
‘This is Piers. Piers Marson. He’s a friend of a friend. He ran me home in his car.’
‘Oh,’ Lynn said.
‘I’ll be off then, Nina. Better get back to Marion,’ Piers said, holding out his hand to Lynn.
His palm was damp, and his handshake as weak and flabby as a dead fish, making her feel like rubbing the sensation of it off onto her mini skirt. He gave Alec a similar perfunctory handshake and left, leaving them to search for Alec’s wallet, which was nowhere to be found. Lynn made a show of taking some of her own money from the sideboard and then they followed Piers out of the door. He was just starting his car when they emerged.
Alec groaned. ‘I wouldn’t wish it on your mother, but if she had to have toothache, why couldn’t she have picked another night?’
Lynn shook her head, as frustrated as he was at having their passion thwarted. ‘Sod’s law, I suppose.’
‘I can’t say I think much to that feller,’ Alec said, watching him drive away. ‘You don’t think there’s anything going on between him and your mother, do you?’
Lynn shook her head. ‘Not a chance. She’s not the sort to play around, and she wouldn’t give him a second look even if she were. He’s not man enough.’
‘Well, there he goes, then, back to Marion. And talking about fibbers, you’re a pretty nimble fibber yourself,’ Alec said.
‘Not as nimble at fibbing as at dancing,’ she hinted. ‘If we go to the West End Club you can mingle with the skippers again.’
Alec groaned. ‘I’d rather mingle with you! You don’t know what you do to me, Lynn.’
‘I’ve been married long enough to have a good idea, but dancing’s as near as we’ll get to each other, this trip,’ she said, and when passion died down she was glad that her mother and the friend of a friend had been there to save her from herself. Taking a risk like that would have been pretty stupid. It would have landed her in the ante-natal booking clinic on the patients’ side of the counter more likely than not, and probably before her divorce came through.
Chapter 17
Just as Lynn was about to set off to collect Simon from Margaret’s, the telephone rang.
‘Simon slept at our house last night,’ Connie said. ‘We were only too pleased to have him.’
Connie went on to inform her that Graham had gone to work, Gordon had gone to the bank, and she couldn’t leave the shop. Could Lynn pick Simon up?
Lynn thought for a moment of telling her to go next door and ask Alec to bring him down with him, but then decided she didn’t want Connie to know anything about Alec. She gave a curt yes, and walked the two and a half miles up to Bricknall Avenue to collect him, fuming at Graham for being too mean to pay for a taxi to take him to Margaret’s. There was certainly no chance of him lashing any of his money about – on them, at least. She arrived at the shop determined to collect her son and be gone, but the door was locked and a sign up: Closed for Lunch. A lunch hour would have given Connie enough time to bring Simon down to Boulevard had she wanted to, but she was no more inclined to exert herself for Lynn’s benefit than Graham was. Lynn went round to the private entrance and upstairs to the living quarters, to find Simon halfway through a hot dinner of shepherd’s pie – not liked at home, but eaten at Grandma Bradbury’s all right.
‘I thought I’d give him a bit of dinner, before he goes. He loves hot dinners, don’t you, Simon?’ Connie said, with a arch smile thrown in his direction.
‘He gets plenty of them at home,’ Lynn said.
‘He loves your house on Marlborough Avenue, as well,’ Connie challenged.
‘He loves the swing, that’s all, and I’m getting him one for my mother’s garden. It’s a shame, Connie, but Marlborough Avenue is over and done with for us. I wouldn’t live in that house again for all the tea in China,’ Lynn said, not relishing the dispute in front of Simon, but determined to make her position clear, once and for all.
Connie changed tack. ‘The words of the marriage service are beautiful, I always think – till death us do part. People should stick to their marriage vows. I always have.’
‘So have I!’
‘But you’re going for a divorce!’ Connie protested. ‘That’s not sticking to your vows, is it?
‘Having other women in your wife’s bed isn’t sticking to your vows, either, Connie. And it’s too much for some wives to stomach!’
‘Graham’s sorry about that; really sorry. He wishes he’d never laid eyes on her.’
‘Come on, Simon, hurry up and finish your dinner if you want it, or leave it and let’s be going.’ Lynn said, abruptly.
Simon didn’t budge. ‘I’m finishing my dinner so I can have some pudding,’ he said.
‘Hurry up, then,’ Lynn sat down on one of Connie’s tapestry-covered cottage chairs to wait for him, watching her spoon rice pudding into a bowl. Poor, stupid fool with her nose to the grindstone all her life, standing in the shop all day while Gordon gadded off with his women! Polishing her floors and dusting her light fittings when the shop shut, and never looking up to see what was going on around her.
‘Graham never wanted it to come to this. All this upsetment, it’s making him ill. He’s not eating,’ Connie said.
‘It’s a pity he didn’t take after you, then, instead of—’ Lynn began, and stopped. It had been on the tip of her tongue to enlighten her mother-in-law about the way Gordon had stuck to his marriage vows, but the code got the better of her and she bit her comments back. Let Connie live in her
fool’s paradise if she wanted to. Lynn couldn’t blame her; she had been just such a fool herself, once. She would never have believed that Graham had betrayed her if she hadn’t had the evidence thrust mercilessly under her nose.
Holding a spoon full of raspberry jam poised over the rice pudding, Connie looked up, directly into Lynn’s eyes, ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she said, softly, ‘but those women never meant anything. Gordon’s still mine, and he always will be. And who wants a man nobody else wants?’
That bolt from the blue left Lynn speechless. With a smile of quiet triumph Connie removed Simon’s dinner plate and put the pudding in front of him. ‘He loves my rice pudding, don’t you, Simon?’
Simon looked up at Connie with a smile that would have charmed the birds from the trees. ‘It’s lovely, Grandma,’ he said, and it was with a shock that Lynn watched her young son consciously exercising his masculine charisma on his grandmother, and his grandmother playing up to it.
She frowned. He’d better not turn out like his grandfather, that’s all, she thought – or his father, come to that. She wanted none of their tomcat tendencies in her son.
Recovering her self-possession, she said: ‘I don’t want a man nobody else wants, Connie. I want a man who wants nobody else but me.’
‘You don’t understand men, then.’
‘I understand the sort of men who are loyal to their wives and families, and they’re the only sort I want to understand. You can keep the rest,’ Lynn said, and forbore from adding: including Graham.
‘You could have knocked me down with a feather,’ she told Brenda, when they were sitting in the Criterion that evening waiting for Alec. ‘Dozy Connie’s not that dozy after all! She’s known what he’s been up to for years, and she’s put up with it.’
‘No wonder he’ll always be hers then, silly mare,’ Brenda laughed, her blue eyes dancing. ‘Why would he leave her? Where else would he find somebody daft enough to slave in the shop all day and then go home and slave in the house while he’s off out chasing other women?’
‘Aye, ironing his shirts so she can send him out looking like the cut-price Playboy of the Western World! My thoughts exactly,’ Lynn said bitterly, thinking more of herself in that role than of Connie.
The Would-Be Wife Page 9
