The Would-Be Wife

by Annie Wilkinson

  ‘Did you say your mother was back, Lynn, or did I dream it?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, you didn’t dream it,’ she said, sliding the sanitised chops under the grill. ‘I was surprised you didn’t comment on it straightaway.’

  ‘I’ve got my mind on other things, just at the moment. There’s a lot going on at work. So how did your dad react? Did he welcome her with open arms?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Lynn said, lighting the gas under pans of vegetables.

  ‘I’ll bet. He didn’t offer to kill her, I hope.’

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s as bad as that,’ Lynn said.

  ‘I wonder why she came back? Maybe her new man didn’t live up to expectations.’

  ‘Or maybe she missed us all.’

  ‘Maybe. A stroke of luck for us, anyway, her coming back. At least she’s here to look after her grandchildren. I thought I was going to have to go into exile for a week or two.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have had to go into exile, Graham, you’d have chosen to go . . . and have your mother running round after you – just about chewing your food and wiping your backside – instead of giving me a hand with four young lads who’ve just lost their dad. They’ve got a lot on their minds as well – like a father they’ll never see again and a mother at death’s door in hospital.’

  ‘There’s no need to be coarse. I’ve got a demanding job, Lynn. I work bloody hard, and I’m shattered when I get home,’ he protested.

  ‘Yeah, for an hour or two, but you’re never too shattered to go out again, and stay out half the night.’

  He was quiet for a moment, giving Simon the chance to jump in with: ‘I want Auntie Margaret’s lads to come and sleep here.’

  Graham ignored that. ‘How is Margaret, by the way? Without exaggerating, if you can manage it.’

  ‘Without exaggerating she had to have two blood transfusions, and she’s not right yet. She’s still very poorly.’

  ‘She’ll recover all right. Women do from these pregnancy things.’

  These pregnancy things. And there we’ve got the opinion of the expert, Lynn thought. ‘How’s Kevin, by the way?’ she said, reminded of Kev by her own comment about Graham staying out half the night.

  He looked genuinely surprised. ‘Kev? I haven’t seen him for weeks. I ought to ring him, I suppose.’

  ‘Don’t bother for me. I wouldn’t care if I never saw him again.’

  ‘I won’t, then. I’ve got too much to do, anyway.’

  ‘If Auntie Margaret’s lads aren’t coming here, I want to go to their house and stop with my grandad,’ said Simon.

  ‘Stop with your Nanna, you mean,’ Graham said.

  Simon looked uncertainly at Lynn.

  ‘He means his grandad,’ she said. ‘He’s missed a trip so he can look after the lads. My mam’s still got the job.’

  ‘They’ll have them at Boulevard, then, surely.’

  ‘No, we all thought they’d be better off staying in their own home. We thought the less disruption the better.’

  ‘Your mother’s there as well, then, I suppose.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Lynn said, evasively.

  He looked her carefully in the face for a moment or two. ‘She’s not, is she?’ he concluded. ‘She’s at Boulevard, and he’s at Margaret’s. Not just separate bedrooms, but separate houses. That’s interesting. Whose idea was it, his or hers?’

  ‘How do I know? Ask the cognoscenti at the golf club. They’ll know more about it than I do,’ she said, and quickly moving on from the subject of her parents’ sleeping arrangements, added: ‘We’ll ask your grandad if you can sleep at Auntie Margaret’s this weekend, Simon. Then your dad can take me out, for a change.’

  ‘Certainly. I’ll take you anywhere you want to go.’

  ‘Why not the golf club?’ she said. ‘That seems to be the best place for getting to know what’s going on.’

  ‘Sorry. I meant anywhere but the golf club.’

  ‘Why not the golf club, then?’

  ‘Because the subject of trawler owners and fishermen might come up, and some of the members’ opinions might not tally with yours. Jim’s death got us quite a bit of sympathy, so I’ve managed to smooth things over at the company. I don’t want you upsetting the applecart again,’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s not been in vain then, has it, Jim’s death?’

  ‘No need to be sarcastic. You know that wasn’t what I meant.’

  ‘If we’re not going to the golf club, we’ll go to the Continental Restaurant on Princes Dock. I’ve heard it’s very good,’ Lynn said. She wanted to see this place her mother raved about for herself.

  ‘It’s too expensive,’ he said. ‘What about the Duke of Cumberland instead, and a bag of chips on the way home? We can walk it there.’

  Chapter 44

  One night out and a week later Lynn had just arrived home from taking Simon to school when the doorbell rang. She was stunned to see Piers Marson standing on her doorstep, looking as if he hadn’t slept for a week.

  ‘I’ve tried to stay away, but I couldn’t. I had to come. I’ve got to see her; it’s killing me!’ he said, holding out a sealed envelope. ‘Will you give your mother a letter?’

  Lynn gave a short laugh, and shook her head. ‘Absolutely no chance!’

  ‘Please. I’ve got to talk to her. She’s broken my heart.’ He said it so piteously that she couldn’t help feeling a twinge of sympathy.

  ‘You broke my dad’s heart between you; I know that. He’s not the same man.’

  ‘I’m sorry. It was never our intention to hurt anybody, but Nina wasn’t happy in her marriage, and neither was I in mine. I fell head over heels in love with her.’

  ‘You’re married, then! Well, what about your wife’s broken heart?’ Lynn snapped.

  ‘My wife and I have lived separate lives for years.’

  ‘So you say. Well, you’re living a separate life from my mother now, so let’s keep it that way. She can’t have been any happier with you than she was in her marriage.’

  ‘We were happy, deliriously happy for a time, but she missed you and Simon and her other grandchildren, that’s all. And then there was the missing trawler, she was anxious about that. That’s why she left me. You’re the only reasons she went back to him – her children and grandchildren.’

  ‘She got fed up with you, Piers, that’s all there is to it. You had a middle-aged fling with each other, and now the party’s over. Accept it, and leave her alone. She’s happy with her husband.’

  He looked devastated. ‘I don’t believe it. I don’t believe she’s capable of it, and I won’t believe it until she tells me herself. I’ve got to talk to her.’

  ‘It’s time you went. You should never have come here, and you’d better not go anywhere near my mother. Leave her alone, unless you want to bring a lot of trouble on her. You’ve caused us enough grief already – all of us.’

  ‘He hasn’t harmed her, has he?’

  ‘You stand a good chance of him harming you, if you push it any further,’ she threatened, and shut the door.

  Where had they been living, she wondered? She ought to have found that out before closing the door. Maybe she should tell her father he’d called, or warn her mother.

  Maybe she should do neither. Maybe it would be far better to let sleeping dogs lie, and hope Piers Marson dropped out of their lives.

  ‘It was awful,’ Margaret said. ‘My dad had just brought me back from the hospital and we were in their house sitting eating a dinner she’d cooked when he knocked on the door. She answered it, and my dad shouted to know who it was. She tried to make him go away, and he wouldn’t, and as soon as my dad realised what was happening he was out there, punching him round the head, and she was dancing around them, screaming, “Don’t hit him! Don’t hit him!” Oh, it was just awful, and the more she screamed the harder he punched him, until his nose was pouring blood, and he could barely stand up. Then he turned to her and he said, “You tell him to sling his hook. You
don’t want him.”

  ‘Well, I don’t know what she would have said if he’d given her the chance, but she hesitated for just a fraction of a second too long for him, and he said, “You make your bloody mind up where you want to be, you – this minute!” Well, she took one look at his face and I don’t think she dared stay. I’ve never seen anybody look as mad – and she was shaking. So she went and got her coat and her bag, and she kissed me on the cheek and she said, “Look after yourself, Margaret,” and she went. I’ve never seen anybody look as furious as my dad did then. He looked ready to kill them both. I don’t know what the neighbours must have thought. And she’d only been gone five minutes, when our Anthony turned up. “What’s been going on here, then?” he said, “you could cut the atmosphere with a knife,” – and I just burst into tears. I thought, if only you’d come five minutes sooner, she might not have gone. I was that upset, I couldn’t speak.’

  ‘I bet I know what happened next,’ Lynn said, guessing that her father and Anthony would have gone down to Rayners.

  ‘Our Anthony thought I was crying because of Jim and the miscarriage, so my dad told him what had happened. So he brought me home in his taxi, asking me if I knew where she’d gone, and I didn’t, so he dropped me off, and he went back to my dad.’

  ‘What a homecoming,’ Lynn said. ‘But do me a favour, Margaret, and don’t say anything in front of the lads. I don’t want Simon hearing about it and letting on to Graham. Let him get his news from the bloody golf club.’

  ‘From the golf club?’

  ‘Aye. There’s not much they don’t get to know up there, according to Graham. Probably before it happens, at times,’ she said. ‘Anyway we’ll have to find out where she is, and go and see her.’

  ‘Then my dad will think we’re going against him, and I don’t want him to, because he’s been that good to me and the lads. There aren’t many grandads who’ll look after four boys on their own for the whole of the half-term holiday, and he’s still calling in twice a day, to make sure I’m all right.’

  ‘He didn’t have to look after them on his own,’ Lynn protested. ‘Their Nanna would have helped, if he’d let her.’

  ‘I know she would, but you know the way things were, and he was staying here.’

  ‘He’s made it impossible for her.’

  ‘I know he has, but he said – it was just her attitude. She acted as if going off with another bloke was no worse than putting too much sugar in his tea, or spoiling a good shirt in the wash . . . a sort of minor mishap. She put him through hell and she thought he should just be glad she was back, and carry on as if nothing had happened. He said he’d idolised her since the day they were married, and she seemed to think that gave her a licence to make him look a fool in front of everybody, and then stroll back home as if there was nothing amiss. She was as cool as a cucumber, he said. He couldn’t stomach it.’

  ‘Did you tell him what she said about Piers Marson? About him getting under her feet, and always sticking his neb in?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s the only time I heard him laugh,’ Margaret said. ‘He said, “I could have told him that. After three days she’d had enough, she wanted you out of the way. She wanted you back at sea, earning money.” That’s why he never took a trip off. He said he’d missed all our young years, but he’d be seeing a lot more of these four, and our Simon.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Where do you think?’

  ‘Probably Rayners, with our Anthony.’

  Margaret nodded. ‘That’s my guess. I don’t think he’ll get drunk, though. He stopped that when he was looking after the lads.’

  ‘Well, she’ll be all right where she is, I reckon. The fancy man seems besotted with her.’

  ‘Be nice to know for sure, though, wouldn’t it? Just to know.’

  Lynn left without breathing a word about Jim, and Margaret gave her no openings. Too raw, Lynn thought. Better leave that subject alone until Margaret brought it up herself.

  As soon as she got home and settled Simon in front of the telly Lynn rang the Dorchester, and discovered that her mother was no longer working there. They had no idea where she might be and had no address for her other than the one on Boulevard. She hung up, flummoxed as to where to turn next.

  A couple of minutes later Connie rang to say she thought Graham was working himself into the ground, poor lad. ‘I’m worried about him. He looked that pale and ill last time he called – haven’t you noticed how pale he looks? He could do with a complete rest, before his health breaks down altogether,’ she said.

  ‘We could both do with a complete rest, and a change of scene,’ Lynn said. ‘Is there any chance of you babysitting on Friday or Saturday night? Or Sunday, even? If we could have a night out together it would make a change from all this misery and hard work. It would do us both good,’ Lynn said.

  ‘Oh! Oh, I’ll see, but . . . I can’t make any promises. I might be going out with Gordon any of those evenings,’ Connie said, ‘so I’ll let you know.’

  Lynn put the receiver down, confident that she would be waiting till the cows come home to be ‘let know’. From not being able to get enough of Simon while she and Graham were separated, Connie seemed not to want to look after him at all now they were back together, though she would never have admitted it. She seemed to begrudge her son and his wife a night out together. It was almost as if she wanted Lynn to endure what she’d had to endure, and Lynn could not believe that Connie had endured her husband’s betrayals without a lot of grief, for all the claptrap she talked about ‘understanding men’. But sitting alone night after night, wondering what her husband was up to had been good enough for Connie, and Connie now seemed to think it good enough for her daughter-in-law.

  Lynn’s thoughts drifted to Mrs Orme’s large, soulful eyes and her constant glances in Graham’s direction at that dinner party. And that look she’d given him before she left – oh, poor you! what an awful wife you’ve got! And Graham hadn’t been quite so energetic in the marital bed the past few nights, either. If the Bradburys were running true to form it probably wouldn’t be long before they were inviting Spaniel Eyes to tea with them, to add to their collection of their son’s conquests.

  Lynn was too weighed down by other matters to worry about it. Her head was crammed with more important things – like Margaret, her nephews, her mother, her father – and what might have befallen Alec, that not a soul had heard from him for so long. After the loss of the Sprite, she had bought a local paper every day and combed through it for news, grieved to see the names and photographs of the lost crews – many of them from families she knew. She was always relieved not to find Alec’s name listed, but trawlers from all the fishing towns were in the Arctic, Fleetwood included, so although no news might be good news it was no absolute guarantee he was safe. His photo could be in one of the Fleetwood papers, for all she knew – or any fishing town from Aberdeen to Lowestoft.

  It was time she got Alec out of her head, anyway. She was a respectable married woman again, with a husband who was forging ahead in his career, and Simon was happy. She couldn’t drag him away from his dad and out of another beautiful home with a wonderful garden, even if Alec were to knock on her door this minute. And Alec was never going to knock on her door. That idea was nothing more than one of those beautiful fantasies that women tantalise themselves with when their lives have gone sour.

  Alec had been nothing but a dream, a mirage of some wonderful oasis she had never quite managed to reach – and never could reach, now. But, as Margaret had said about their mother, it would be nice to know for sure that he was all right. Just to know.

  Chapter 45

  The trip had been rough one, the conditions extreme, with gales, black frost and heavy icing of the ship. Most of the crew were frostbitten, on lips, hands and feet. Engineers apart, they had spent over eighteen hours a day gutting fish on the open deck, and stacking it in ice in the fish room – a normal working day for them when at the fishing grounds. The catche
s were so heavy that the cook and galley-boy had been roped in to help when their own work was done. They were all dead on their feet, every ounce of energy expended, and pure fatigue combined with hands and forearms that were blue and numbed by cold had resulted in a fair few slashing injuries from gutting-knives as sharp as razors. But the end was in sight. The fish room was full and they were running out of boards to stack it all. All they wanted now was an order from the skipper to stow the trawl and turn for home.

  They could see him, sitting on the bridge, gazing into space, not making a move.

  ‘What the bloody hell’s he doing? Is he pissed again? Is he having a nap?’ one of the deckies asked.

  ‘Nip up there and see what he wants done, Jackie,’ said Alec.

  Jackie went and a moment later shouted down to him: ‘Just come up here a minute, will you?’

  Alec went, and found Jackie gazing at the skipper who was sitting with his eyes wide open. ‘Is he dead?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s doing a bloody good impression, if he’s not,’ Alec said, and wrapped his fingers round the skipper’s wrist. ‘I can’t feel a pulse.’ He pressed his ear to the skipper’s back, slightly to the left. ‘I can’t hear his heart beating.’

  ‘I can’t see him breathing, either,’ Jackie said. ‘What’s happened to him?’

  ‘How do I know, you dozy bugger? Maybe had a heart attack, or something.’

  ‘What are we going to do wi’ him? When one of the deckies died on a ship I was on a while back we unloaded him at the nearest port and he got sent home in a lead-lined coffin.’

  ‘Well, we’ve finished the trip, and it’s four or five days steaming to get back to Grimsby, so I reckon we’ll put him in ice in the fish room, and take him home. He’ll get there just as quick as taking him to any port, and a lot cheaper.’