Daughters of Penny Lane

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘She told me herself, Peter. We were same, you and I. Just weeks we knew each other when we married. How did Dan manage with the walking?’

  He sat down. ‘He’s OK; had the sense to take a stick with him. I thought Vera would steer clear of marriage after what she went through with that husband of hers.’

  ‘They will live in house with boys and run the shop together. I made sure they carry on with Christmas book for customers.’

  ‘And leave this flat empty?’

  ‘They letting it to somebody of good character who will be caretaker when shop is closed. Oh, and engagement is a secret until after tonight is finishing. She says this our party, not hers and Yuri’s.’

  ‘Right.’ Peter was quiet for a moment. ‘Have they got something to hide?’

  Olga shrugged. ‘Vera is saying he not a full quid in the trousers. Does that mean what I am thinking?’

  He shook his head. ‘Depends what you’re thinking.’ After watching the blush painting itself along her cheek-bones, he smiled grimly. ‘I think I know what you’re thinking. And we keep that to ourselves, too. Bloody Siberia, I’ll bet. Whippings and beatings and kickings. Poor Yuri.’

  She agreed. ‘I believe Vera will be happy at last, because her first husband was bad man. He hurt her many times. Perhaps he forced her when he came home angry. Yuri will look after her, and she will care for him, too. After many years of starving, he now has good food, comfortable house and nice neighbours.’

  ‘And she’ll get a good bloke who’ll appreciate her. I’m glad, then, Olga. OK. Now I’d better tell you about Nellie.’ So the tale was related yet again.

  Olga was not surprised. ‘This is bad mother. She pushed Nellie to the edge, and Nellie jumped, but this time, she jumped where she stood instead of running away. She fight for husband, for daughters, for grandchildren. Shall I go there? Shall I go down the road and tell Nellie and Martin they would be missed at the party? It would be sad if they did not come, and Marie might be upset, because it’s in her house.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to say no, love, because you should do what you want to do, but I wouldn’t interfere. She may be hoping that none of us knows about it or at least that we’re not discussing what happened. But it’s up to you.’

  Olga paced about for a few seconds. ‘I do not want to make it worse. You are right, Peter. I stay here, get ready for party. Oh, so much happening, and poor Marie and Nigel just back from Jersey.’

  ‘They’re off to Africa in a few weeks, and I wouldn’t bet money on them coming back. It’s their hearts’ home. He says somebody’s got to start saving big cats. There’s folk out there doing just that already, but he’s determined to join in.’

  ‘Alice will miss Marie.’

  ‘I know, Olga. She’s already worried about Nellie, I bet. Now, calm down and start getting ready for our party. We can’t mend everybody’s troubles, can we? Anyway, I’m going for Frank; Leo needs company. They can play together in the yard.’

  Agreeing with every word, the bride went to bathe and wash her hair. It promised to be a long night, and she would need all her strength to function well in the midst of so much tension. Poor Alice, poor Nellie – and Martin, too. But it was very much a case of carrying on no matter what. They would be celebrating Mr and Mrs Atherton’s marriage and she, as Mrs Atherton, intended to be radiant.

  ‘Nellie, it’s none of Marie’s doing, and you know that – and she’s the hostess. And what about Olga and Peter? This is their wedding reception, not just some night out in a pub. Olga’s sold all that jewellery belonging to her mam, and she’s giving us some money to buy a better life for us and our girls and the babies.’

  Nellie shrugged. ‘I know, Martin. It’s just that I—’

  ‘It’s just that you, Marie and Alice are the three musketeers. You’ve always stood by one another through thick and thin. Why weaken that link, love? I’d miss them, too, with having no family of my own.’

  ‘I know,’ she repeated.

  ‘Our girls have got the other two grandmas to babysit, so Janet and Claire will wonder where we are tonight. You’ve got to let this drop, Nell.’

  Her mouth was set in a hard, thin line, as if drawn on by an infant in his first week of school.

  ‘Talk to me,’ Martin begged.

  She stared at the floor for several seconds before speaking. ‘It’s our Alice,’ she stated. ‘And something else, something I used to remember, but it’s gone out of my head. Our Alice knows Muth’s evil, but she’s invited her round for Sunday dinner a week tomorrow, and she asked us to call in, didn’t she? That was when I lost my rag. You know our Alice has always hated Muth more than I did, more than Marie did. Now, she’s going to break bread with the twin sister of Judas. Talk about two-faced . . .’

  ‘There’ll be a reason. Alice Quigley does nothing without a reason, as you very well know, queen.’

  ‘Then I want the reason,’ she snapped.

  ‘Shall I go and ask?’

  Nellie wasn’t going to hide behind her husband; hadn’t she recently been accused of doing just that? She was fifty-three years of age, head of a family if everybody discounted Muth. Elsie Stewart had never been a mother, so it was time for Nellie to step up. ‘Can you mind the shop and two babies at the same time?’ she asked.

  ‘Course I can.’

  ‘Right.’ She nodded. ‘Well, I’m going to have this out with my sister before it grows bigger than the pair of us. I’ll be back.’

  She went to pick up her summer-weight jacket from the flat over the other shop, stopping only to tell her daughters where she was going. Leaving through the back of the building, Nellie began the walk to Penny Lane. She wanted answers.

  Alice wasn’t in. ‘She’s gone to buy some stockings,’ Dan told her visitor. ‘She said her old ones have ladders big enough for Jacob, whoever he is. Come in. I’m in the downstairs bedroom, but there’s a couple of chairs in there now. Are you all right, Nellie? I believe you haven’t had the best of days, thanks to old Elsie, as per usual.’

  ‘You’ve heard, then?’

  He paused momentarily; he could see she was upset. Nevertheless, he chose to speak the truth. ‘I’ve heard? I think the whole of Liverpool has the story by now. What the bloody hell happened to you? It’s not like our Nellie to go marching about with an awning pole.’

  ‘And you walking again,’ she said quickly. ‘I reckon the North Pole knows about that, never mind an awning pole. I’m really happy for you, Dan.’

  ‘You don’t look happy.’

  She sank into one of the chairs while Dan used the other. ‘I’m not, love, not really. I mean, how do you feel about Muth coming here for her Sunday dinner? Do you really want to sit down and eat with her?’

  He offered no immediate reply.

  ‘Do you?’ Nellie persisted.

  Dan shrugged. ‘Put it this way, Nellie, if the chip shop opened on Sundays, I’d be in the park eating with my fingers. It’s something to do with Alice’s ghost, Callum, I think.’

  Nellie blinked several times. ‘You believe in him?’

  ‘He made me walk again. I think – I’m not completely sure – but he might have been tormenting old Elsie. Something’s going to happen on Alice’s birthday next year, so she’s softening her mother up, because the old cow has to be here.’

  ‘It’s her birthday, too. Alice was born on Muth’s fortieth, and it was . . . it was terrible. Stuff happened – weird stuff, I mean. I can’t remember now, because somebody climbed into my head and rubbed it out.’

  ‘Callum. He will have had his reasons for making you forget, Nellie.’

  ‘What are you on about now?’

  ‘You have to trust your sister. Alice is different and sometimes difficult, but she’s honest to the core. You were the one who worried about Elsie being out in the world on her own as an elderly person. Alice didn’t know you’d flip your lid when she suggested coming round after Sunday dinner.’

  Nellie walked to the window and st
ood at the side of the bay that gave her a view up the lane. There was no sign yet of Alice. How long did it take to buy a pair of stockings? Without turning to face her audience of one, she delivered again the reason for her change of heart over Muth’s isolation. ‘I lost the girls. Martin left in the hope that I’d come to my senses and throw my mother out, but she robbed me of all power. She has a way with her, and she made me feel stupid. Martin found out about the babies. We had missed months of their lives. That was when my real hatred for Muth was born. And yes, before you ask, I did want to kill her. I just lost my common sense in a street filled with people.’

  ‘And if Elsie goes to the cops, or a solicitor?’

  She raised her shoulders. ‘Apparently she fiddled the books and stole money from the shop. We have her over a barrel, as Martin put it. Oh, Alice is coming now.’

  ‘Right. I’ll go into my recovery room and leave you to it. It’s better if the two of you sort this out. You put the kettle on, love. And good luck.’

  Nellie watched as her brother-in-law walked away. He looked as if he’d never had anything wrong with him, so perhaps Callum really was a worker of miracles. What the hell was she going to say to their Alice? Sorry? Was she sorry? Yes, she was.

  She walked through the hall and into the long kitchen. This was a smashing room, with a place for dining furniture at the end nearest the hall, and with the business area close to the back door, the two parts separated by open shelving where ornaments and best crockery were displayed artistically. She had a good eye, their Alice. Compared to the Brownes’ flat on Smithdown Road, this place was luxury.

  As she set the kettle to boil, she heard the front door opening. With a straightened spine, Nellie turned to face her baby sister, the one who’d been born on Muth’s fortieth birthday . . . there’d been towels, sheets, a pillow. Blood, a lot of blood. As for the rest of it, Nellie couldn’t remember.

  ‘Hiya, Nellie.’

  ‘Hello, Alice.’ That was supposed to be what people called the ice-breaker, though both women wondered whether the greeting might be little more than the bell at the start of a boxing match. ‘I’m sorry,’ Nellie said.

  ‘Me, too. It’s hormones with both of us, I think. You on the change and me pregnant.’

  Was it really going to be this easy, they wondered simultaneously?

  ‘Why did you do it, Alice?’

  ‘Make that brew and I’ll tell you.’ The younger sister flopped onto a dining chair. ‘Where’s Dan?’

  ‘In the back room.’

  ‘Give him a cup first, Nellie.’

  When both women were at the dining table, Nellie asked, ‘Why, love? Why feed her?’

  ‘Because she’ll take months to feel easy with me and Dan. I need her sweet as sugar by our birthday.’

  Nellie cleared her throat. ‘Sweet as arsenic would be more likely.’

  ‘You think I don’t know that? I’m not daft, sis.’

  ‘So why are you bothering?’

  Alice shrugged. ‘I’m under orders. Well, not completely, because I can override him.’

  ‘Who?’

  Seconds ticked by. ‘Wait a minute, and don’t get frightened.’

  ‘Eh? What do you mean?’

  ‘Just sit there and relax. He won’t hurt you.’

  Nellie frowned. ‘Frank? He wouldn’t hurt a fly.’

  ‘Not Frank. Frank’s visiting Leo, anyway; Peter took him up earlier. He’ll be back soon, because Olga will be doing herself up for tonight. Just keep quiet a minute.’ She sat back, arms folded. ‘Callum?’ she shouted.

  The air shimmered, as if the rainbow needed to be thin in order to cover the whole room. It wasn’t vivid. Alice looked at her sister. ‘Can you see that?’

  Almost paralysed by fear, Nellie whispered, ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s Callum, Dad’s older brother. He was haunting Muth, so I stopped him. He’s playful, daft and Irish in spite of the surname Stewart. It’s Scottish, from the time when the Scots and the Irish changed places or something. Think of him as a mentally unstable guardian angel.’

  The shimmer brightened.

  ‘You can stop that before you start,’ Alice chided. To her sister, she said, ‘He thinks he’s a bloody magician working the halls and clubs. Now, he says we’ll know everything come April next year. Muth has to be there, so I’m buttering her up.’

  ‘Margarine would do for her,’ Callum said. ‘Hello, Nellie. Don’t be afraid, I’m not dangerous. Yet.’

  Nellie’s jaw dropped.

  ‘So you hear him, then. You are honoured. He helped to make Dan walk. He introduced himself to Harry, too. And he wanted to keep Muth away from all of us till next year, so he started messing about like a poltergeist.’

  ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘You did. So I stopped him,’ she told Nellie. ‘Callum, shut up for a few minutes, will you?’

  The senior sister closed her gaping mouth. ‘So you have power over him?’

  ‘Some. He works through me. After all, I’m the seventh child. When we moved back into this house, my otherness got stronger. That was his doing. You can go now,’ she shouted, her words directed at the pale rainbow. ‘And don’t go messing about in my sewing room.’ Alice turned to her big sister. ‘He hides my tailor’s chalk when he’s sulking. Like an overgrown kid, he is.’

  Nellie was calmer by this time. ‘So you treat him like you treat everybody else? Even though he’s dead?’

  Alice chuckled. ‘Dead? No, he’s on the move all the while, can be in several places at once, and he makes us so-called alive folk look dozy. Now look, Nellie. To get back to what’s been happening between me, you and Muth, let’s just stick it on one side and ignore it. I won’t have her here every Sunday, but I’ll let you know when she’s coming.’

  ‘Can’t you leave it for a while? Like till the end of this year? That would still give you three clear months.’

  ‘No.’ Alice shook her head. ‘I’ve got to get her used to being here, so that when it’s our birthday she’ll come for a party – just me, her and Dan. Only there’ll be one or two more here, witnesses for Callum’s final show. A gallery for him to play to. When it’s over, he’ll disappear, and this house will get some peace.’

  Nellie burst into tears. ‘She’s our mother,’ she sobbed. ‘That night when you were born, she was screaming. Dad stayed with her till the midwife came. I remember that bit, but the rest is gone. I had to take towels and things off Dad, but there was more to it than blood and screaming.’ She dried her eyes. ‘Dad was never the same after it was over. Neither was Muth, because she got nastier and nastier until she turned herself into the creature we know and don’t love today.’

  Alice thought about that. ‘I think she’s always been nasty. She has three brothers and three sisters, all abroad, and she never hears from them. Muth was the baby, the seventh child – wouldn’t you think the others would have kept in touch?’

  ‘Does she write to them?’

  ‘What do you think, Nell? Has she ever given a thought to anything beyond her own comfort? Anyway – enough. Are you wearing that blue dress I made for you? It brings out the colour of your eyes.’

  Nellie managed a feeble smile. ‘I am, love. I got a very near match – bag and shoes, then a turquoise necklace and earrings. You were right – turquoise and navy look great together.’

  Alice giggled. ‘I’m always right. Had you not noticed?’

  Elsie had made a friend among the residents; well, Phyllis was a friend of sorts, she supposed. They drank tea together occasionally, played dominoes, talked about the weather or the price of fish, and Phyllis would babysit the house sometimes, occupying Elsie’s quarters on a Friday or Saturday night, thus allowing Elsie to go out to the pictures.

  But on this particular Saturday, the caretaker was in no mood for a visit to the cinema. After being attacked by her own daughter in broad daylight, and having been soaked by Ian Collins, she was still simmering, and she knew it wouldn’t take much for her to return to
boiling point. Phyllis agreed to sit in and listen to Elsie’s wireless, so Elsie was out of the door like a bullet from a gun. Was Marie back from Jersey? If she could manage to hurt Marie, the other two musketeers would feel her pain, as it was one for all and all for one . . . oh yes, they took good care of each other.

  Walking was good. Being active made her feel positive, as if she were moving towards something rather than running away like a half-drowned rat. She knew where she was heading. Marie, the second daughter, had turned into a jumped-up middle-class do-gooder with a wealthy husband and the only house in this part of the world with a couple of acres and a menagerie. There were animals aplenty, and Marie Stanton, wife of renowned veterinary surgeon Nigel, was one of the darlings of various charity groups, a must-have at dinners and party nights.

  Elsie stopped and stared hard at the mock Tudor building. Tonight, Nigel and Marie were host and hostess. Near the front window, a massive wedding cake took up space, though familiar faces passed by at each side of the large white confection. Well, this was a bit different, as was the music, whose volume travelled through open windows all the way to the opposite side of the road. Elsie frowned. It was an unusual sound, Eastern European – was it Russian, or Hungarian maybe?

  Whatever it was or wasn’t, Elsie needed to get away from here, because Alice had a habit of homing in on her, so she retraced her steps and began the journey homeward. She hadn’t caught sight of her youngest daughter, but there was never a show without Punch – or, in this case, Judy – was there? And the party would probably continue until the early hours of the morning.

  When she judged herself to be at a safe distance, Elsie slowed down. They were holding a wedding reception in Marie’s house. She imagined caviar and smoked salmon, pretty little finger foods, game pie and some wonderful desserts. The Stantons probably hadn’t suffered much even during the war; rationing remained in force to this day, but not for them. Oh no, people of standing in the community never did without much, did they?

  She placed herself on the wall opposite the house for which she was responsible, her body taut, her mind breaking the sound barrier. Phyllis would wonder why she’d returned so quickly. They’d all be drunk down at Marie’s place. A game of dominoes with Phyllis might be called for. The party wouldn’t be over till well gone midnight; Marie and Nigel would be enjoying the sleep of the inebriated. All for one and one for all. Tonight was the night.