Daughters of Penny Lane

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘That’s not what I mean. Oh, God, how am I going to face Dan?’

  ‘You’ll manage,’ he whispered into her hair, ‘and you’ll be back for more. I knew we’d be great together. Have you ever felt like that before?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you hate me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you hate yourself?’

  Close to tears, Alice simply nodded.

  ‘You know I’d marry you tomorrow, don’t you, girl?’

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘But I love him, Harry. He’s been so ill and so patient and uncomplaining – he’s a one-off. The thought of hurting him – well, I’d sooner cut my own throat.’ Things in the bed department had improved, too, but now, after Harry, she owned a clearer understanding of how wonderful physical love might become if . . . if she ever allowed the process to reach its conclusion.

  Harry smiled. ‘I’m taking him to the match on Saturday. What he doesn’t know can’t hurt him, and we just have to be careful. See, what’s happened here’s a rare thing, and I knew how it would be the minute I look my mucky work boots off and stepped into your life. Don’t be frightened by this kind of love. It’s real.’

  Alice studied the floor. ‘But I am afraid.’

  ‘You’ll get used to it.’

  ‘We haven’t done it,’ she snapped.

  ‘It will be all right.’

  ‘Will it?’ Alice picked up the tools of her trade and ran out of the room, down the hall and out of the house. She could never get used to betrayal. In her own hall, she closed the door and rested against it for a moment. Did she love her husband? Was he patient and uncomplaining, or had he become slightly demanding and spoilt of late?

  ‘You all right, love?’ Dan shouted.

  ‘Yes.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m just going to get changed. Harry’s house was a bit dusty.’ She fled up to the first floor and turned on the bath taps. The tiniest bedroom was now her dressing room, and she knew that she could not approach her husband until she had rid herself of these clothes and scrubbed clean every pore on her skin. She picked out a pretty nightdress with a matching negligee.

  In the bath, she faced the seriousness of her almost-sin and vowed that it would never be repeated. She loved Dan. Harry was probably the better lover, but there was more to life than that. Wasn’t there? She needed to talk to Olga tomorrow.

  Olga made sure that Yuri was asleep in the spare bedroom. She’d sent Peter down to play cards with Dan, and Alice was coming here for a chat.

  From the doorway, Olga smiled at her sleeping childhood friend. It seemed like only yesterday when they’d played in the orchard together and chased each other through the fields. The grin remained on her face. He used to pull her hair; she couldn’t begin to count the number of ribbons she’d lost to him. For almost thirty years she had lived in this country, yet her English remained appalling. Yuri, after spending just a few months looking for her, spoke the language almost perfectly; she really must try harder.

  The shop door rattled, and Olga ran down to admit another friend. It was wonderful to have a confidante at last, someone to talk to about the wedding, about a solution for Yuri, about clothes, shoes, perfumes and make-up. She opened the door, and Alice almost fell in, tears streaming down her face.

  ‘Alice, Alice . . . what is problem?’

  ‘I’m bad. I’m a bad woman, Olga.’

  ‘Come here.’ The Russian towered over the tiny Scouser and hugged her close. ‘You not bad person. Let’s go upstairs. We talk quiet, because Yuri in bed, tired after searching for me. Don’t cry.’ She closed the door, then led the way up to the first floor.

  They sat together on the sofa. ‘Now, tell me what you do that is so bad it makes you cry hard.’

  ‘Last night. Harry,’ Alice whispered.

  ‘No!’

  ‘Yes. Not all the way; not the – you know what I mean.’

  Olga shook her head. ‘You not try him on for size like me with Peter?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Sorry, I should not make joke. Tell me what this about, Alice.’

  ‘I don’t know. It just happened. He says he loves me and he wants more, and we just have to be careful.’ She dabbed at her eyes with a damp handkerchief. ‘He’s taking Dan to the match as if nothing’s happened. I scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed myself afterwards.’ She swallowed hard. ‘Then I went to bed with Dan. I promised . . .’ a sob bubbled to the surface and fractured her voice, ‘I promised till death us do part.’

  Olga was old enough to know that she could offer little beyond physical contact, so she simply held her friend close. Life was a difficult journey, and this tiny woman had reached a crossroads with NO ENTRY signs everywhere. She wept like a child, felt like a child, so small were her bones. Anger burrowed its way into Olga’s brain. It had risen from her chest, and it was hot. ‘I make tea,’ she announced before leaving Alice’s side for a few minutes.

  In the kitchen, she arranged a tray, prepared the tea and stood for a few moments at the window. She would deal with Harry. Oh yes, a Russian woman filled with righteous anger was more than a match for a wayward plumber. Harry Thompson was going to wish he’d never been born.

  Nine

  Olga Konstantinov’s head pushed its impertinent way into Harry Thompson’s back garden. She wore a new shoulder-length hairstyle and a very deep frown. Her hands clung to the gate while her mouth stretched fully open in order to take in enough oxygen to complete her mission. ‘Stop!’ she screamed. He was making a din fit to rattle slates. ‘Sick man next door,’ she reminded him. ‘Dan needs rest and quiet, not building site in next garden. You must begin to think of others, Mr Thompson.’

  ‘And who put you in charge? The Archbishop of bloody Canterbury?’ Harry knocked the plug home. This female might have been related to Russian nobility, but she was now an ironmonger on the brink of marriage to a Woollyback who was too good for her by a mile.

  He ceased hammering. ‘I have to screw into this wall,’ he told her, exasperation embroidering his words. ‘It’s going to be wood fastened to brick, so I need plugs. Plugs want hammering, and I’m hammering.’ What did the blooming woman expect? A vow of silence? The rein on his temper was loosening slightly, and he wasn’t used to running out of patience. She looked extraordinarily angry – this was about more than a hammer on brickwork, he suspected. It was about Alice; Alice had spilled her tale of woe to Olga Wotsit.

  ‘For what reason is this to happen?’ she asked as she entered the garden and stood near the gate, arms folded, disdain in her expression. Olga, taller than many males, always managed to make him feel inferior. How could a woman who sold firewood cause a bloke to be . . . stupid? She had closed her shop in order to talk to him about whatever, because Peter was at work looking after Dan and . . . and what business of Olga’s was anything? Had Alice sent her? Alice had already said her piece about the racket he was creating. In truth, Alice had produced more noise than a hammer against a plug, so he suddenly felt like a victim, as if the entire female population of Liverpool had decided to attack him.

  ‘Why you do this?’ asked the intruder once more.

  ‘Pigeons,’ he snapped. ‘You’ve seen them before – medium-sized birds, racers. They make a brrr-brrr noise.’

  ‘Pigeons? Birds will be fastened to kitchen wall?’ She waved her left hand, causing the large emerald and its surrounding diamonds to answer the sun’s rays angrily. Even her jewellery was in a bad mood.

  He nodded, then blinked. Reflections from Miss Russia’s engagement ring might well strike a man blind. Already irritated after yet another lengthy telling-off from Alice, he was in no mood for the Eastern European in one of her elevated furies. ‘It’s a loft,’ he said, the words emerging slowly, as if being delivered to a child. ‘The loft will be fastened to the wall – if you’ll let me get on with it. At this rate, I’ll be at it till Christmas, and the birds will be homeless.’

  Olga glanced at the roof. ‘Loft? You have attic room already i
n loft. I see it up there, window on roof at front of house.’

  Harry was running out of patience, humour and the will to inhale. ‘This is a different kind of loft; it’s for racing pigeons.’ Women. Which idiot had died and left females in charge, and how many more would be aiming barbs at him today? He felt like telling her to sod off, but he was not going to make a show of himself. She was tapping her nails against the gate – a definite indication regarding diminishing patience.

  Aristocratic eyebrows crept up aristocratic forehead, returning quickly to their rightful place in order to create a deep frown. ‘They cannot race if screwed to wall,’ she said.

  ‘No. They race when I let them out. When they’re not racing, they live in this loft, a different kind of loft that doesn’t sit on a roof.’

  ‘And go to where when they race?’

  ‘How the hell should I know? I’m just an amateur. Their owner died and left them to me. But I’m told I could release them as far away as Brighton and they’d find their way back. Even from France. They were used during the war to carry messages back and forth.’ He watched her mouth as it hardened into a straight line – here came the real reason for the unscheduled visit.

  Olga drew herself to a full height which, for a woman, was impressive. She marched towards him. ‘You, Mr Pigeon-Keeper, will stay away from my friend who is Alice,’ she whispered. ‘She have husband what is ill to be looking after, and you are interfere with it.’

  ‘With what?’

  ‘With the looking after. She and Peter are doing the special education to bad leg, trying make it stronger. Alice is work hard. You distract.’

  ‘Do I?’

  She nodded. ‘This you are already knowing. She like you. But Alice give word in marriage ceremony, and you have gone far with trying to make her sin. She belong with Dan.’ Olga’s eyes travelled the length of Harry’s body. ‘You handsome and strong, but Dan only handsome. She respond to you like bitch with dog, no more than that. Leave alone.’ Turning on a heel, she marched out of the garden, slamming the gate as if placing a full stop at the end of her lecture.

  Harry sat on the doorstep, a heavy sigh escaping his lips. What a bloody day – and it was only about ten in the morning. Alice had been magnificent, flashing eyes, balled fists, temper glowing along fine cheekbones. The Russian army had marched in Alice’s footsteps, and the Russian army was not best pleased. Now, Bolton was glaring at him over the low wall that separated two small gardens which had once been paved yards. ‘Don’t you start,’ Harry snapped.

  Peter grinned.

  ‘What’s funny?’ Harry asked.

  ‘I’ve said nowt,’ was Peter Atherton’s reply. ‘I’m here because Dan wants to know why you’re making such a din. He gets headaches.’

  ‘Pigeons.’ Harry placed his hammer on the ground.

  Peter shook his head. ‘Alice and Vera will kill you.’

  Alice was already killing him. ‘Look, Pete – this is a matter of honour. My dad’s old mate left me the car and the pigeons. I can’t take the Austin without the birds – it wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘They’ll kill you,’ Pete repeated. ‘And I don’t mean the pigeons.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘There’ll be bird shite all over their washing. They don’t take kindly to a sheet covered in bird droppings. You’ll be strung up, drawn and quartered with your head on a pike down the Pier Head. Alice has a right temper on her if she’s riled, and Vera takes nowt lying down since her owld feller topped himself. I’d not want to be in your clogs, lad.’

  ‘Shut up, Pete.’

  Peter shut up.

  ‘Look, I can’t do right for doing bloody wrong these days. I just listened, nodded, and asked a few questions when Mr Foley went on about his birds. Now I’m landed with them.’

  ‘Or flying with the buggers. Sorry. I was supposed to shut up.’ He paused. ‘Harry?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s an answer. There’s always an answer.’

  Harry stared at the floor. ‘Go on, then.’

  ‘Sell them on to other pigeon fanciers.’

  ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Old Joe wouldn’t like it.’

  Peter rolled his eyes skyward.

  ‘It’s called loyalty, Pete. Loyalty means doing right by one another.’

  Peter delivered a speech about old Joe being no longer among the living and about Vera’s and Alice’s washing. ‘Be sensible, lad,’ he pleaded. ‘You’ve no experience with pigeons.’

  Harry lifted the hammer and jumped to his feet. ‘Vera and Alice?’ he yelled. ‘Vera and bloody Alice? Does the whole world have to revolve round sheets and towels and tablecloths? Just bugger off and leave me alone, Pete. I’m not shaping my life to fit in with two neurotic women and their laundry. Tell them to put a bill through my door, or if they’d rather I’ll take their stained treasures to the Chinese wash house.’ He marched into the kitchen. It was twenty past ten, and the day was getting no brighter. Bugger them. He was keeping Joe’s birds, and that was an end to it. No, he didn’t really want them, but he wasn’t about to take orders from Vera Corcoran, Alice Quigley and Olga the ironmonger.

  Somewhere in the darker recesses of Harry’s mind lurked the vague suspicion that he was taking his revenge, and he caged the thought where it belonged, behind rain clouds and several compartments in his pigeon loft. He needed bigger plugs, but he wasn’t going to buy them from Olga Komplain Enough. Oh no, he would go to town for his shopping. He might go to town again tonight. Somewhere in a city famous for its pretty women, there was a match for Alice. Harry would find her. No, he wouldn’t; he was damned sure he wouldn’t. Oh, bugger it. He put the kettle on.

  Alice Quigley, in outwardly hard-as-iron mode, moved very quickly after jumping off the bus. Completely dedicated to her mission, she looked neither right nor left except when crossing the road. Today, nothing could touch her. Today, she would take the bull – no, the cow – by the horns. Even so, her palms were moist and her heart seemed to beat a little faster than usual. She was going to see Muth, the parent who had never been a mother, the cruel, cold woman with eyes like glass and that thin, disapproving mouth. ‘I will not be afraid,’ Alice breathed softly.

  Opposite the house in which Elsie Stewart now lived, Alice sat on a low wall. The huge buildings that made up the terrace on the other side were the ugliest she had ever seen, with yellow brickwork, hideous windows and crumbling attic dormers on the roofs. Muth would fit in well here, because her soul was as miserable as mortal sin, and this was a sad, dark setting.

  Her mind skipped back an hour or so. She’d told Harry Thompson to go to hell on a fast train, no stops between here and there. She was a bad woman. The telling-off of her neighbour hadn’t made her so; she was bad because she wanted him. She wanted two men, while a third one, a man she couldn’t even see, brushed past her. He placed himself beside her on the wall. ‘Oh, no,’ she breathed. Callum was with her. Who the bloody hell was he?

  ‘Alice?’

  She made no reply until she heard her name repeated.

  ‘Alice?’ Callum said for the second time.

  ‘Yes?’ God, here she was, talking in broad daylight to a man who was sometimes a baby and always invisible.

  ‘She’s in.’

  ‘I prefer you as a baby,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t always need to answer back when you cry.’ She’d be locked up if this carried on. She’d get put away for talking to herself in a decent suburb of Liverpool. Brighton-le-Sands wasn’t as snobbish as Blundellsands, which boasted large houses and people with big ideas and old money struggling to do the job of new. Brighton-le-Sands was like Waterloo and most of Crosby: working people from many walks of life, decent shops and some pleasant avenues. The sad terrace of huge houses opposite was not typical of the area, but it was Elsie Stewart’s home for the time being.

  Alice rose to her feet. The sooner today’s unscheduled meeting began, the sooner it would be over and done w
ith.

  ‘She’s watching you,’ Callum whispered. ‘She’s worried.’

  Hoping he would stay outside, Alice crossed the road. By the time she reached the door, Muth was standing there, grey skirt, cream blouse, expression uncertain, arms folded. ‘What an honour,’ she sneered. ‘How did you find me?’

  The visitor raised an eyebrow.

  ‘Well? How did you know I lived here? I’ve not told anybody where I am.’

  ‘I was told by a friend.’ Alice pushed past her mother and turned left into a room whose door stood wide open. So this was the dragon’s den. It was a sizeable space with bedroom and living room furniture, and with two further doors leading off the wall opposite the bay window.

  Elsie followed her daughter. Why the hell was she here?

  ‘Not bad inside,’ was the younger woman’s spoken opinion. ‘The outside’s ugly, though.’

  ‘My own bathroom and kitchen,’ Elsie boasted smugly. ‘The rest of the tenants have to share facilities, but I don’t.’

  ‘How nice.’

  ‘I’m the caretaker. It’s a lot of responsibility.’

  The two women stood facing each other across a small, circular dining table with just two chairs. Elsie sat. Alice sat. ‘You look well,’ she said, deciding to open fire with blanks instead of live ammunition. Softening up a woman like Elsie Stewart was nigh impossible, though lending her a false sense of security might prove to be a good idea.

  ‘I am very well for my age.’ What was little Miss Know-It-All up to this time? Alicia Marguerite was no Nellie, no walkover. This youngest one, the blessed, the gifted, the beautiful, was a little snake under spectacular skin. Was she venomous or a constrictor? Elsie stood up and stared for a moment at her unexpected visitor. ‘I’ll make a pot of tea.’ In the kitchen, she pondered the reason for this intrusion from the self-elected representative of her family. What was she after? What plans were circulating in her head? Was the she-wolf dressed as a ewe while about to strike out with her tongue? She set a tray, poured milk into a small jug and filled the sugar bowl. She had better get back to her room and see what happened.