‘Are you sure you’re all right?’ Annie asked.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ll want another two bedrooms done when I can get my hands on some more material.’ The landlady shook her head. ‘How long will we have to be paying for that war?’
‘The people who really paid are buried abroad, Miss Meadows.’
Annie sighed. ‘I know. I wasn’t thinking. Isn’t that a bit heavy for you to carry all the way to Penny Lane?’
‘No, no, it’s not too bad.’ Compared to the weight of whatever lingered in this building, the physical burden was as light as air.
‘You still don’t look right to me.’
She smiled as broadly as she could manage before escaping the concern of Miss Annie Meadows. Turning the corner, she stopped, placed her package on the ground, and entered another otherness. She was aware of the landlady going into one of the rooms – ah, it was a kitchen. Sepia smoke eliminated the only source of light by covering a small window. Water ran. Gas popped as it gave birth to flame. Crockery and cutlery rattled. ‘Callum?’ she whispered.
‘Yes.’ The single syllable drifted past her face in a breath of air.
‘Where is she?’
‘Here.’
The otherness abandoned her as swiftly as it had arrived. Turning her head to the left, Alice saw a familiar figure walking towards her. ‘Oh, my God,’ she mouthed. So this was why she had felt so disturbed. Callum was here, and Muth was approaching.
Elsie Stewart continued down the empty road and turned right. She didn’t speak to Alice, nor did she look at her. Alice abandoned her parcel and walked to the corner. ‘Muth?’ she called.
But the woman who had given birth to Alice entered the bed and breakfast house without making any response.
Picking up the curtain material, Alice allowed the light to dawn. Elsie hadn’t seen her because . . . ‘I wasn’t there. Callum hid me.’ Such power, that baby had. But he wasn’t a baby now, was he? He sent his baby self to announce his presence, but he had become in death whatever he might have been in life. How suddenly that crying stopped, as if . . . as if he had been silenced.
Hurriedly, she made her way homeward, her sense of direction unerring this time. Had Callum tried to prevent her from going to Miss Meadows’s house? Had he made her lose her way? When had he died and why? She needed to talk to someone, and that someone needed to be a woman.
She would talk to Olga . . .
Seven
Alice could hear voices from Dan’s ground-floor bedroom, so he wasn’t alone, and wasn’t ready to move into the marital bed for the night. Olga’s laughter drifted up the hall and Alice, grateful for the presence of her friend, crept upstairs, because she needed to be alone. Was she ever alone? Did Callum follow her everywhere, and how had she managed to know his name without ever being told? Who the hell was he, anyway?
She stood in the doorway clutching at the curtain material as if her life depended on its presence. Although her world had always been what some might describe as slightly mad, she had never expected it to descend into such chaos. Muth walking past her? Muth not seeing her? Muth never missed a thing, so what kind of lunacy was this? ‘She must have gone blind. Or maybe I was seeing her when she wasn’t really there. For all I know, I might have imagined all of it, cos I’m sure this seventh child thingy is a load of baloney.’ Yet she had felt Muth’s presence at the front door before entering the house . . .
She placed Miss Meadows’s parcel on a chair and stretched out on the sofa whose position in the world had been altered by the move up to the first floor. Dan and Peter were laughing. Harry let out one of his growling hoots, so Dan had three companions. All was well for now. Was all well, though? Was it normal to sleep with one man and dream about the bloke next door? Whichever way she looked at her life, she named herself a lunatic.
‘Are you here?’ she whispered. ‘Callum? Was that going to be your name? Were you born here?’ She swallowed. ‘Did you die here?’
Nothing. ‘He probably thinks I’ve had enough for one day.’ Perhaps part of his brief was to protect her, since she felt almost sure that Callum had arrived to warn her or to pass on information. She wondered why he hadn’t just come out with it, whatever it was. Because it was going to be a shock, she supposed. He was building up to some kind of climax, and she wasn’t sure she’d want to know about whatever that was.
Today’s invisibility had thrown her. A person from the other side, sometimes a baby, sometimes a man, had performed a cheap magic trick, one that might have been better placed in a theatre rather than on a street corner. ‘Muth walked within inches of me . . .’ But what worried Alice more was the thought of poor Miss Annie Meadows being within reach of Elsie Stewart’s razor-sharp tentacles. The woman was a menace, and––
‘Alice!’
She looked up. ‘Hello, Olga.’
‘We thought you were out. I am come to steal some thread to make my wedding dress right. I am going thinner these days.’
Alice’s jaw dropped, but she snapped it closed and smiled. ‘Peter? You and Peter? When did you decide? And when’s the wedding?’
‘Very soon, yes. You and Dan will be witnesses, I hope.’
‘Of course we will.’
The shopkeeper sat next to her friend. ‘Not a party, just bride, groom and two friends. No fuss. We went in the bed, and all was good.’ She smiled at her companion’s blush. ‘Alice, would you buy a coat or a pair of shoes without trying on for fit? I have forty-seven years and no idea about man, and this was necessary.’
‘So you tried him on?’
Both women curled into balls of near-hysteria. ‘Are all Russians like you?’ the younger woman finally managed.
‘I not know. See, I am many, many years living in England now, so I am forgetting the land of my birth. I should be speaking better English, too. When my father and grandfather lived, we spoke Russian in the house. When they both are dead, I continue to think in my own language, and I speak English to customers only. Peter will teach me.’
Alice snorted. ‘He doesn’t speak English – he’s a Woollyback.’
‘So English is what King George is speaking?’
‘Well, when he’s not stammering, yes. He’s a nervous man, Olga. His dad was one hard-faced bugger, and his mam looks as if her face would split if she smiled. So don’t copy the king. Look, Peter’s English will have to do. Mine’s not great, because––’
‘Because you are Scouser.’
‘I am. What are you wearing for the wedding?’
‘Red. A happy colour. Or I have a pretty blue dress with coat to match.’
Alice remembered one of her many dreams. ‘Not purple?’
Olga shrugged. ‘I have purple, yes.’
‘And green jewellery?’
The Russian froze. ‘No one ever saw the jewellery.’
‘I did. It was in a kind of dream, and you were wearing a purple dress with green stones in a necklace. In another dream, you were in violet with a diamond tiara. That was an almost-awake dream in your shop the first time I met you. Just a silly otherness of mine. But you’d look great in purple and green.’
‘Alice?’
‘What?
Olga got up, closed the door and returned to sit next to her friend. ‘I have Romanov emeralds. They are in strong place underneath Liverpool bank. We bring them when we run. They were wedding gifts to my mother. This was a long, long time ago, when the family was safe.’
‘Wear them,’ Alice said, when she could speak again. ‘Don’t tell people they’re real, but I know that with your colouring purple and emerald green will be perfect. Very dramatic. Then after the wedding, get them to a London auction house and sell them. You could buy a lovely house––’
‘I am not wanting lovely house. Just Peter is what I want, and we live above shop until––’
‘Until you die with no children, and the government takes the emeralds and spends your money on rubbish.’
It was Olga’s turn to
have a loose jaw moment. ‘No!’
‘Yes. Get rid and use the money to enjoy life. Spend it. Buy a little house at the seaside or in the country and have the best clothes, a good car, everything you want. That’s better than leaving it to the state.’
‘I was never consider this. You are right, of course – of this I must think. Thank you.’
‘You’re welcome. You said you needed thread.’
‘Tomorrow. Now, I think about purple and take my Peter home if Dan has had his shower. You good friend, Alice.’
Alice, who had wanted to talk to Olga about the day’s events, went down to feed first her dog, then her husband. After all, Frank was always top priority. She stood over the boxer while he inhaled his food. Dan’s cottage pie was in the oven, so all she had to do was brown the top under the grill.
Harry came out of Dan’s room. ‘I took your young man for a ride, and he seemed to enjoy it.’
She turned. ‘Good. And thank you.’ He showed no sign of leaving. ‘What?’ she asked. ‘What’s up with you now?’
‘My curtains, Alice.’
‘I’ll get Olga to come in and help me with them.’
He smiled. ‘I’ll help you.’
‘No, you won’t. Your idea of help is miles away from mine. Where’s Dan?’
‘In the shower. Olga’s tidying up, and Peter’s helping Dan.’ He paused. ‘Don’t you trust me?’
She didn’t trust herself, either, but she couldn’t say that. ‘Leave me alone, Harry; I’ve had a terrible day.’
He looked more closely at her. The skin under her eyes looked slightly bruised, and she was paler than normal. In that moment, he realized that what he felt was more than simple desire; he was definitely falling in love with this delicious, tiny girl. He’d nursed strong suspicions, but he now felt completely sure that what he was enduring went beyond the merely physical. She must not become ill, because he would not be able to live in a world that didn’t have Alice in it. That was a selfish attitude, but he was unable to correct it. And the thought of her suffering cut through him like a sharp, hot knife.
‘What?’ she snapped.
‘Have you had one of your moments today?’
She felt affronted, almost furious. Why? How did he manage to get under her skin so easily? ‘That is none of your business,’ she hissed under her breath. Oh no, he looked so hurt. ‘Sorry,’ she whispered, ‘but I’m very tired. I met a lovely lady who needed new curtains, and I dis–covered that my mother is a guest of hers. It’s a bed and breakfast place. Think Hitler, multiply him by ten, and that’s my mother. She’s a witch.’
‘Oh.’
‘She’s a seventh child, but with her it’s a curse rather than a blessing. All her brothers and sisters emigrated, and I bet it was to get away from her. I’m told she stood over her dying father until he signed everything over to her before he died. She’s shown no sign of having money, but the farm and the animals must have been worth something. And now she’s living with some poor old woman who deserves better.’
Harry shook his head. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘What can I do? Kill her? I don’t think so.’
He pondered for a moment. ‘Write an anonymous letter. Warn the woman she’s living with.’
‘Now you’re talking daft.’
‘Am I? I’ll do it. Tell me what you want to say, and I’ll do it.’
‘Fingerprints, Harry.’
He grinned. ‘I didn’t arrive on one of last Tuesday’s Fleetwood boats, Alice. I can see you’re troubled, and I want to help you.’ He would do anything for her – surely she knew that?
She felt the heat in her face. ‘All right, I’ll bring your curtains tomorrow evening.’ Vera’s boys would be there, she hoped. ‘And thank you.’
‘Alice––’
‘Don’t. I know what you’re going to say, because it’s written all over your face – and not anonymously. I even understand, because if I didn’t have Dan . . . well, I like you. But I can’t betray him. He lives for me and almost died for me when we were bombed.’
He understood only too well. Alice Quigley was devoted to her husband. She had a strong sense of duty, and was an honourable woman with a firm moral code and . . . and skin so beautiful that the marks under her eyes imitated the slight bruising on an almost perfect peach. ‘It won’t be easy,’ he said, his voice soft and somewhat unsteady. ‘I never felt like this about Vera – about anybody. I’ll take her and the boys away for a while when she gets out of hospital, give myself a chance to get my head straight. Or my heart.’
Something akin to disappointment occupied Alice’s chest. Why? She knew she belonged with Dan, yet this man disturbed her so thoroughly – was she in love, or was this lust? And how might she find the answer to such an impossible question? ‘What are you doing to me?’ her mouth said, though her brain felt disengaged from the whole scene.
Harry’s eyebrows shot north. ‘I’m doing nothing. You’re doing nothing. Stuff like this just happens, and nobody can control it. We can ignore it, but it will build and build like pressure in a steam engine, and we’ll need to scream.’
She almost smiled. ‘The train now letting steam off at platform seven is the ten fifteen to hell. We have platform tickets only, Harry. We daren’t board that train. It’s an express, isn’t it?’
He nodded. ‘No stopping, no chance to have a change of mind. You can’t hide in the ladies’ waiting room reading some soft magazine.’
‘I know. See you tomorrow, then. Oh, and forget anonymous letters.’
‘OK.’ He winked, turned his back on her and went home.
Annie Meadows could not account for her sudden uneasiness. The curtain girl left, and Elsie returned from shopping, and things were different for the rest of the afternoon and evening. It was something to do with the curtain girl. Things had stopped being all right and were suddenly all wrong. Life had turned seriously weird, and she couldn’t account for any of it. Any of what? What the hell was up with her? Was she going senile?
Elsie was cooking lamb chops in the kitchen. Normally, Annie would have sat with her new friend drinking tea or peeling vegetables, but she remained in the lodgers’ little dining room, rubbing imaginary streaks off cutlery before arranging place mats in their usual order. Mr Stone had Buckingham Palace and Mr Clinton the Houses of Parliament, while Mr Timpson’s mat carried a photograph of Trafalgar Square.
She placed linen napkins alongside the knives and set water glasses for the three guests. The fourth was at a business meeting – he was Marble Arch, which remained for now on the sideboard. When the table was up to scratch, Annie sat in a small easy chair and stared out into the street. As she thought about her current malaise, she decided that it had begun with the arrival of Mrs Quigley, who had been discovered having a funny turn on the front doorstep. It was as if the poor young woman had left a bit of herself behind, because the house felt . . . it felt sad. Never a fanciful woman, Annie shook herself, stood up and walked down the hall to the kitchen. ‘Table’s ready,’ she said. ‘Just three of them tonight.’
‘You’re quiet.’ Elsie turned the chops. ‘Are you feeling all right?’
‘Just a bit tired. I had one of my heads earlier on and took two Aspros.’
‘Go and have a lie down. Oh, by the way, when’s the meeting about our partnership?’
Annie felt nervous, though she’d no idea why. ‘Erm – next week. They said they’d get back to me when they could, because they need to find a time when they’re both available.’
Elsie, always alert and tuned into whatever went on around her, was immediately on her guard. Annie Meadows was having reservations about the plan to enter an agreement regarding the business, but why? What had gone wrong? ‘Are you having second thoughts, Annie?’
She was, and she had better say so. ‘I may decide to retire altogether.’
‘Oh.’ Elsie sat in the chair opposite Annie’s. ‘So you’ll sell the business?’
‘More than likely
– if I do retire. I’m not as young as I used to be.’
‘Neither am I, but I’m willing to work. We could manage between us.’
Annie wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure that she wanted to spend the rest of her life in the company of a woman who was so different from Doreen. Doe had owned a quiet side, but she’d also been amusing, a chatterbox with an opinion on most subjects, especially those about which she knew little. Elsie was . . . well, she was sour. Her face was usually frowning, and she often looked as if she’d come across something unpleasantly smelly or ugly – or both. ‘I know we could probably manage, but I’m fed up with managing. I think I’ll give three months’ notice to my regulars, and put the house up for sale in the next few weeks. Sorry.’
Could Elsie afford the guest house? Did she want to afford it? There were people here during the week, but from Friday morning until Monday night she would be alone in the large house. Right, she had better start looking round for something a bit more promising. Annie could play silly buggers, but her not-to-be partner was already out of here in her head. And the chops were slightly burnt.
Vera Corcoran became the cabaret on Women’s Surgical. People with stitches had to keep hands on scars, because laughter threatened to undo the careful embroidery bequeathed by theatre staff. She told jokes, few of which would have been suitable for delivery to a clergyman.
Vera was a menace, and she knew it. Her specialities were food, snorers, visitors who brought the wrong reading matter, and doctors who thought they were gods. ‘See him? His nose is that far up his own arse, he can smell his breakfast.’ Another of her favourites was ‘How many mistakes have you buried, son?’ This one she used on younger doctors. While the staff expressed delight at her speed of recovery, they were concerned for others in the ward, and Vera refused point-blank to return to what she called solitary conferment.
‘Have you seen the state of this?’ she asked loudly of no one in particular. ‘Porridge? It looks like the stuff what sticks wallpaper up. You’ll be all right if your stitches come undone, girls, cos this’ll glue you back together, no danger. Me spoon’s riverted to the plate.’
Daughters of Penny Lane Page 13
