Alice stared through the window while awaiting her return. ‘Say my name and watch her face.’ She stiffened. Callum had followed her in, then. Well, there was no show without Punch, she supposed. When Elsie had returned and the tea had been poured, Alice continued in conversational mode. She spoke in general terms about Martin’s return, about Nellie and the grandchildren. ‘Of course, they don’t want to see you again.’ There was no malice in her delivery. ‘Just thought I’d let you know we’re all right, so you won’t worry.’ The words wore a dressing of sarcasm along their syllables.
‘Staying away from them suits me.’ Elsie stirred more sugar into her cup. Alice was in charge; ownership of the china tea set and tenancy of the flat meant nothing, because this youngest daughter had been in charge of just about any situation since her late teens. Except for her otherness, of course, because she’d always sworn that was out of her hands.
‘None of us wants to see you.’
‘Suits me,’ the older woman repeated. She dipped a ginger biscuit into her tea.
‘Dan’s home, staggering about with crutches, or sometimes just one. A man comes in and helps him and we work on exercises. He gets dressed every day now, so he must be feeling a bit better.’
‘That’s good. Dan’s a big fellow, and he might be a bit much for you to manage on your own, so I’m glad you’ve got help.’
Alice took a long draught of tea. ‘Muth, me and Dan are back in the old place on Penny Lane.’
‘So I’ve been told.’
‘And my second sight’s plugged into that front bedroom.’ She watched her mother’s body as it stiffened. ‘It’s not a bedroom any more, because Dan can’t do stairs, so it’s our living room. Visitors go up to the first floor now unless they want to talk to Dan.’
‘I see.’
‘And not all our guests are visible. Dad comes – well, his tobacco does, and a bit of smoke sometimes. I’ve heard children playing, heard you screaming.’ She paused. ‘I do all my sewing up there. Made some curtains for Miss Meadows. I believe you stayed with her for a while.’
Elsie’s spine became ramrod straight. ‘So you put her off going into partnership with me?’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
The mother, knowing that this daughter rarely lied, accepted her answer.
Alice continued. ‘It’s loud and strong in that Penny Lane house. A baby cries. Not all the time, but it screams. It upset me at first, but I’m getting used to it now – no choice, really.’
‘Really?’ The word was almost snarled.
‘Yes, then it stops crying suddenly, like a wireless being turned off. And a man talks.’
Elsie swallowed audibly. ‘Your dad?’
‘Dad makes no noise. He just comes and goes without a word.’
Muth nodded her agreement. ‘Charlie never had much to say for himself at the best of times. It was like living with a wax dummy.’
Alice nodded. ‘He didn’t get the chance. He lived in a house filled by females.’ The second sentence made Elsie relax slightly, Alice thought. Now was the time to strike. ‘Who’s Callum?’ she asked, her tone wiped clean of any guile. ‘It’s a name I picked up a few weeks ago.’
The cup rattled in its saucer when Elsie placed it down. ‘Erm . . . your dad had a brother called Callum. He died in Ireland years ago. Older than Charlie, he was.’
‘There’s a Callum in that upstairs room.’
Elsie shrugged as nonchalantly as she could. ‘He must be keeping his little brother company, then. Their mother wasn’t well, you see, after Charlie was born, so Callum helped to bring him up. Your granddad turned to drink. He was a feckless tramp. Callum was like him.’ A headache threatened; she stopped speaking.
Alice could see that her mother had arrived at a state worse than Olga’s Russia had been in about thirty years ago. ‘I suppose things will get clearer the longer I live there.’ She stood up. ‘Right, Callum – time to go.’
Colour drained from Elsie’s face until her skin became a sick shade that resembled putty. ‘He’s here?’ she managed eventually. ‘In my home? You brought him?’
‘No, he followed me. I think of him as being everywhere and nowhere at the same time. He pops up unexpectedly and makes silly magic happen – even gave me this address. Perhaps he’ll stay here with you for a while – who can say?’ She glanced to her left. ‘What?’ she asked before facing her mother again. ‘He says he doesn’t enjoy your company. So I suppose he feels like the rest of us. Oh, and he just told me he can be in more than one place at a time. No boundaries where he comes from, or so he reckons.’
‘Go,’ Elsie breathed.
‘Don’t worry, Muth – I’m going. Before I do, take this as a warning. Leave us alone, especially our Nellie. I’m working on her, getting her to lose weight and smarten up. Marie’s fine. Claire and Janet are fine; so are their husbands and babies. Stay away from them, or I’ll post Callum through your letter box and leave him here.’
Alice’s invisible companion chose this moment to spill Elsie’s paperwork from behind an ornament on the mantelpiece. ‘Stop it,’ Alice chided. ‘Leave things alone for once.’
‘Take him away,’ Elsie begged.
‘Sorry, Muth. I have no control over him. You know I’ve never had control over any of it. He’s a show-off, like an amateur magician. My uncle Callum’s more of a child than a man, I’d say.’
‘Go away,’ Elsie shrieked.
‘He’s gone, Mother.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Sometimes he lets me know.’ Daughter stared at mother. Never before had Alice seen Elsie so withered, so terrified. There was something very wrong here. In spite of her strong antipathy for the woman, Alice didn’t know what to do. Should she go or stay? Was Muth going to have a heart attack or a fit of some kind?
‘Go,’ Elsie begged. ‘Go, and don’t ever come near me again, especially if you have that . . . that thing hanging about with you. Go on – get out.’
Alice left. Well, what else could she have done?
Outside, she spoke from a corner of her mouth. ‘Who are you?’
He’d buggered off, of course. She’d asked the question before on a couple of occasions at least, but he always insisted that it wasn’t time yet, that Alice must be ready before he ‘showed’ her who he was. Now it seemed he was her uncle, her dad’s big brother.
Inside Elsie Stewart’s ground-floor flat, the new tenant sat rigidly on the edge of her bed. Tricks. Alice had said he did silly magic, and here he was doing just that. He had clearly returned after his earthbound companion had left. On the over-mantel mirror a breath-like mist appeared, and an invisible finger wrote in it. LEAVE THEM ALONE AND I’LL LEAVE YOU ALONE.
The old woman blinked. In that fraction of a second, the ominous message disappeared. Was she imagining things? No. The air in the room was suddenly chilled, and she felt certain that it was his doing. After two or three beats of time, she suspected that he was gone, as the temperature returned quickly to normal. But the fear remained; her sole companion was a bleak, black terror. Control was slipping from her grasp, and Alice was the one who had removed it.
So the seventh child really had no choice when it came to her otherness. Alicia Stewart might have been a difficult teenager, but her refusal to share her gift had not been deliberately rebellious. ‘The times I tried to force her to . . .’ For the first occasion in her adult life, Elsie wept copiously. Was this grief, regret about the way in which she had treated her daughters? Did she mourn, at last, the three who had died while doing war work? Perhaps it was worry caused by her ghostly visitor.
She dried her eyes. Crying achieved nothing. She had stairs and landings to think about, and Alice’s companion had promised not to come again as long as . . . No. It had been no promise; it was a threat wrapped in a bribe. And Elsie felt empty and alone. How might she dodge a spirit, especially one who reckoned to have the ability to be in several places at any given time? What might he do to her?
&n
bsp; On the lower deck of a bus, Alice sat near a window. He arrived and told her Elsie shouldn’t bother the family again, and she wondered what the hell he’d done now. At a bus stop, a large woman bearing heavy shopping took the place next to Alice. The new arrival was sitting on Uncle Callum. But she didn’t stay. ‘That seat’s bloody uncomfortable,’ the newcomer complained before finding a different one nearer to the front of the vehicle. Alice grinned. Callum’s sense of humour was alive and well, though he wasn’t. Still, he’d got rid of Muth. Hadn’t he?
She alighted from the bus partway down College Road and made her way to the Stanton house. Nigel would be at work, but Marie should be in, buried in animals, of course. The lion cubs had reached the age of nine weeks and would soon be shipped off to Jersey. Marie was sad. With no children, she had always concentrated her maternal love on her ever-increasing family of pets, and now the cubs, newest yet nearest to her heart, were growing fast and needed to move on.
No one answered the door, so Alice walked down the side of the house to the rear. Larry the llama offered her a filthy look, while horses and ponies whinnied and donkeys brayed. A car pulled into the driveway. Alice retraced her steps and stood, mesmerized, while her sister and brother-in-law tried to drag something out of the back seat. The something was proving difficult to shift.
For a reason she failed for a split second to fathom, Alice started to laugh, doubling over with the pain of it, realizing suddenly that the something had just two feet. And shoes.
Marie glanced at her sister. ‘It’s all right for you, curled up giggling at us. We told him we were taking him to the pub for pie and chips, but we turned left at the dentist’s. Without telling him, of course.’
Nigel Stanton chipped in. ‘The tombstones were rotted and affecting his stomach. They had to go. He’s had gas, so his legs have gone from under him, and he says they don’t belong to him any more. Get your corpse over here, Alice Quigley. And watch he doesn’t bleed on your clothes.’
‘Like Larry the llama, he spits,’ Marie added.
After a struggle and a lot of cursing from Tommy, they managed to drag him into his shed. Alice helped to dump the poor fellow on his bed before having a look round. ‘It’s a palace,’ she exclaimed.
Marie grinned. ‘Our wandering minstrel got house-proud,’ she said. ‘He showers where the animals get cleaned, and he has his own outside lav heated in winter by oil lamps.’
‘You look after him.’
‘We do,’ Nigel says, ‘and he looks after us and the menagerie.’
Tommy’s home was pretty, but the same could not be said for the man himself. With the famous tombstones missing, his nose and his chin almost met. Further distorted by pain, his mouth took on some humorous shapes while he tried to curse the eejits who had forced him into the slaughterhouse. He intended to sue them. He needed a blood transfusion, painkillers, and an extra bottle of whiskey to compensate for what he’d been through. Throughout the tirade, Alice concentrated on her sister, because she didn’t know where else to look.
Nigel was translating, since he was the only one who understood fully the gist of Tommy’s ramblings. ‘We should just leave him,’ he said. ‘Let him sleep it off and hope he comes to his senses in a few hours.’
Marie chuckled. ‘Has he got senses? He’s great with animals, but he’s not what you might call sociable when it comes to people.’
Tommy sat up with remarkable ease for a man in so much physical trouble. He glared at her. He was annoyed. They’d dragged him to the dentist’s, where a man in a white coat had pushed him into a chair and lectured him about poison in his stomach because of his two remaining teeth. He’d been gassed until unconscious, then assaulted. ‘Lost me teeth, so I have,’ he told Alice.
His speech was becoming clearer.
‘You’ll have new ones in a fortnight,’ Marie said reassuringly.
Alice turned away, because she couldn’t trust her face to remain in order. There was a brand new electric cooker, very modern, very clean, a sink that was probably connected to the house’s water and drains, and all Tommy’s dishes and bowls were arranged on a Welsh dresser.
She paced about. Tommy had carpet, rugs, sofa, chairs and a very neat sleeping area with wardrobe and tallboy. Walls were covered in photographs of dogs, cats, horses, donkeys, hamsters, rabbits, Larry the llama and two lion cubs. ‘It’s lovely,’ she said.
‘They’ve took me teeth and they’re taking me lions away from me to some godforsaken place called Jersey,’ he grumbled.
‘And they’ve given you a roof and a job, so shut up,’ was Alice’s advice.
Taken aback, Tommy turned to face the wall, stretching his legs down the bed. Cursing and moaning about life, he drifted towards sleep.
‘Moaning’s his hobby,’ Nigel said. ‘He needs to moan or there’d be steam coming out of his ears, and that might upset the animals. I’m going to work.’ He kissed his wife, winked at Alice, and left.
Marie poured a double Irish into a glass and thrust it at Tommy. ‘Drink that,’ she ordered. His answer was a snore, so she set the glass on a small table. Dragging her little sister out of Tommy’s famous shed and into the back of the house, she set the kettle to boil and poured some biscuits on to a plate. ‘Right,’ she said, ‘what’s happened?’
Alice shrugged. ‘I went to visit Muth and had no otherness, just a companion. Callum, he’s called. I can’t see him, but I hear him and sometimes feel him brushing past me. I think he’s our dead uncle – Dad’s older brother. Muth went crazy when I said his name, and she threw me out.’
The older sister grinned. ‘Can’t blame her for that, because you are a bit spooky, you know. So, what’s the score?’
Alice bit into a brandy snap and spoke through the pieces. ‘Two nil in favour of me and Callum.’ She chewed. ‘He went daft, started chucking bits of paper down from the mantelpiece. She was bloody terrified, Marie. And I’ve got a strong feeling that he went back in after I got ordered to leave. He was on the bus with me, though.’
Marie blinked rapidly. ‘Is he here?’
‘No. You’ve never harmed me. He doesn’t need to follow me here.’ She paused, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Why pick on me, though? He seems very protective where I’m concerned but why would Dad’s brother protect me over the rest of you?’
‘Because you’re on the telepathic telephone and we’re not. He knows you’re receptive.’
Alice told her sister the full story, beginning with the day she and Frank had moved back to Penny Lane. ‘Frank used to see and hear stuff with me, but not any more. It’s all about something that happened in that house. Dan hears nothing, and neither do my neighbours.’
Marie grinned. ‘That Harry couldn’t take his eyes off you at the party.’ She waited. ‘Alice?’
The visitor raised her shoulders in a gesture of nonchalance. ‘He thinks the sun shines out of my back door.’
‘Has he tried anything?’
‘Yes, and nearly got there. I almost . . . let him.’
‘So there’s chemistry.’
Alice puffed up her cheeks and blew. ‘More like algebra, because it makes no sense to me. I love Dan. We’re trying for a baby, but Harry . . .’
‘Chemistry.’
‘If you say so.’ The baby of the family poured more tea. ‘Something’s going to happen,’ she announced. ‘Something big. And no, it’s nothing to do with Harry Thompson. It’s tied to that bedroom we were all born in. Dad comes with his filthy old pipe. I see smoke. Callum whispers to me, writes with tailor’s chalk, moves things. He doesn’t like Muth. If she doesn’t leave us alone, he’ll haunt her, I’m sure, and she’s scared stiff. In our house, a baby cries and stops suddenly. I think the baby’s Callum, but I don’t understand why I think that.’ She sighed. ‘It’s all very confusing, Marie. See, that baby grows up and becomes a man ghost – no idea why he needs to do that changing about stuff.’
Marie swallowed some tea. ‘What makes you think the baby’s Callum and the man,
too, is Callum? He might not be changing – you could have two ghosts.’
‘It’s something I just know. Why he has to go right back to childhood, I’ve no idea, but it must be part of his message. See, where he is, there’s no past, present or future – it’s all one, like a continuous straight line. Maybe the little one is our dad crying, because Uncle Callum brought him up – their mother was ill, and their dad hit the bottle.’ She paused. ‘It’s dimensions. He’s in a different one.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘No idea.’
For a reason that was understood by neither of them, both sisters burst into loud laughter. ‘You could be . . .’ Marie fought to regain her voice, ‘crazy.’
‘True.’
‘Or a witch.’
‘Make a bonfire. Or drown me. Oh, God.’
Marie pulled herself together. ‘Hey, listen to this one. Tombstone Tommy – well Gummy Tommy – is training Larry the llama to be a visitor at Maryfields.’
Alice, suddenly as sober as a dead judge, stopped laughing. ‘But he spits.’
‘Exactly. We’ve opened a book. The odds on him spitting are varying from day to day, but if you want to back him not to spit, you’d need to put a ton of tranquillizers down his throat. His first scheduled appearance is at a garden party, so it’ll be outside, at least.’
‘Wouldn’t Tommy be better off with dogs?’
‘He already takes dogs. I’ve told him it’s going to be a spitfest, but he won’t listen.’
‘And Nigel?’
‘Daft as a bald brush; he says he has faith in Tommy’s ability to train Larry.’
Alice, her face suddenly solemn, shook her head slowly. ‘So you have one crazy bloke in a shed, and another in the house.’
Marie grunted. ‘No, the one in the house isn’t in the house at the moment. He’s down the road with a twelve-foot python in a fridge.’
The younger sister swallowed audibly. ‘And you think I’m mad with an invisible baby, Dad’s pipe and Uncle Callum? Why the fridge?’
Daughters of Penny Lane Page 18
