Masters of the House

by Robert Barnard

  “Was he open about it?”

  Peter thought, his face flecked with bitterness.

  “Well, he didn’t flaunt it, like some do. But he didn’t keep it quiet either. They were seen quite openly together. Mum was going off her head. Thought she was going to be left with all of us on her hands. I had to talk to Dad.”

  “Did you?” said Matthew admiringly. “I don’t think I could do that. What did he say?”

  “Got all stroppy at first. I just looked at him—sort of with contempt. It worked, in a way. He tried this man-to-man thing, saying it was just a bit of a fling, that a man had to break out from time to time, that it wasn’t serious and it wouldn’t last. Said I’d understand when I was a bit older.”

  “When was all this?”

  “Last summer. August-September time. I think your dad may have been next in line, though there weren’t any whispers till towards Christmas, so far as I remember. Like I said, he was cleverer about it—” The boy’s feelings suddenly erupted. “It was disgusting with my dad, with everyone talking behind their backs about him and her.”

  “Did your dad really break it off with her?”

  Peter Leary grimaced.

  “That’s the question, isn’t it? I don’t know. He could have . . . gone with her now and then. In the Fire Service you work funny hours, and there are all sorts of emergencies. . . . He and Mum rub along, but it’s not very nice at home.”

  “What about her?”

  “I don’t give a fuck about her!” said Peter Leary violently. “They say she’s run off with someone. I hope he treats her like dirt, because that’s what she is.”

  “Yes, she is. . . . We’ve heard several names of men who’ve been with her,” said Matthew, though he suspected Peter Leary would have heard them. “But some of them have been to church with their families since she disappeared, so she hadn’t run off with them.”

  “One of those will be Dad,” said Peter Leary, with a twisted, reminiscent smile. “Mum insisted that he go to confession and then come to mass with us. He said that was just daft superstition, but he did it. . . . Who were the other names?”

  “Well, there’s Kevin Holmes and Andy Patterson. I don’t know Andy Patterson at all.”

  “He has a small electrical shop in Bramley. I heard his name too. I don’t think he’s married.”

  “Does your mum have any idea where she’s gone or who she went with?”

  “No. Just says, ‘Good riddance to bad rubbish.’ ”

  “Well,” said Matthew, falsely cheerful, “at least she’s gone now. No danger any longer.”

  “If she has gone.”

  Matthew’s heart thumped dangerously.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Town the size of Leeds, she could be anywhere,” explained Peter. “Chapeltown, Menston, Seaforth. She could be just a short car trip away. This is my turnoff. Keep in touch.”

  “Yes, I will. . . . Tell me if you hear anything.”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  The conversation with Peter Leary cheered Matthew up: It made him feel less lonely. There was someone else who hated Carmen O’Keefe, and for the same reason; someone else who would like to know exactly what she’d been doing and who she’d been sleeping with in her last months. Only Peter did not know they were her last months, of course. Matthew wished he could have told him she was dead; it would have been a seal on their new relationship, and in retrospect he felt a bit inclined to boast about what he had achieved on the night of her murder. But he realised he could not confide in someone he knew so little. That part of the secret had to remain locked between him and Annie.

  At home things remained pretty much as they had been. On bad days communication with their father was virtually nonexistent. He would emit a noise somewhere between a grunt and a whine, and it was impossible to know whether what they said to him got through. He had better days, too, but they were few. They put away from them the thought that one day they would have to call a doctor to see him. They wouldn’t, and that was that. As soon as they got away from that pathetic incubus, though, they were becoming more carefree: They knew they could cope. It was hard work, but they could cope. There were now no threats that they could see to their security. Money came in regularly, and it was adequate to their needs (the fact that their father ate very little and neither drank nor smoked helped a lot). They put money aside for gas, electricity, rates and for any expenses they had not calculated for. The smaller ones talked about their mother no longer—nor about their father, either, if they could avoid it. They accepted Matthew and Annie as a sort of tandem replacement for both.

  On the Saturday after his conversation with Peter Leary, it was Matthew’s turn to do the washing. Keeping the little ones neat and tidy for school meant there was a great deal of washing. While Matthew sorted out the loads for the machine and humped them downstairs from the linen basket in the bathroom, Annie played with Greg and Jamie outside on the back lawn. The party at the Irish Club had stimulated their taste for races and outdoor games. They played hide-and-seek, and then they ran egg-and-spoon races. Around half past five Matthew’s wash was done, and he went out into the garden.

  “What shall we have for tea?” he shouted over the laughter.

  “Fish and chips!” yelled Greg.

  “Yes, fish and chips,” echoed Jamie.

  “Shall we?” asked Matthew of Annie. “There’s enough money.”

  “All right, for once. The sausages will keep.”

  So Matthew walked across the bypass and down to the little Rodley fish-and-chip shop. There was quite a crowd there, and it took him a while to get served (being smallish didn’t help). He bought four portions of cod and three of chips (Gregory and Jamie shared one), and then he started off back home with the deliciously warm bundle cradled in his arms. When he got back to Calverley Row he ran round to the back garden, where the fun and games were still in progress.

  “Come on! Fish and chips up!” he called.

  The children ran up to him, shouting enthusiastically, and Annie followed behind. Matthew opened the kitchen door, but then he stood in the doorway, transfixed. Sitting at the kitchen table was an elderly woman with a kindly smile, dressed in rather dull clothes and looking at them penetratingly. In front of her was a dark, round fruitcake on a plate.

  “Well now, “ she said. “You children have been having people on, haven’t you?”

  CHAPTER TEN

  A Way Out

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?” Matthew demanded, when he had got his breath back.

  The woman smiled gently. She seemed very unmenacing.

  “I came to bring you round this cake. I thought I might as well make one for you since I was making one for my Rob.”

  “Rob?” said Matthew, his voice cracking.

  “O’Keefe. I’m his mother. Your sister there knows me, don’t you, Annie?”

  “Yes,” said Annie, in a whisper of a voice.

  “And you’re Matthew, aren’t you?” She smiled the smile of one who is used to talking to children and enjoys it. “I hear you helped out wonderfully at the party. Anyway, I saw you all playing happily out there at the back, so I thought, ‘I’ll just leave it for them in the house.’ ”

  “You’ve no right—”

  “Sure, everyone’s in and out of each other’s houses in Ireland, Matthew. Did your mother never tell you that? Is that fish and chips you have there? You’ll not want it to be getting cold. Is that your tea?”

  “Yes—we don’t have it often,” said Annie, feeling oddly on the defensive.

  The woman’s smile was still encouragingly ordinary.

  “Nothing wrong with fish and chips now and again. But you should eat it off plates, not out of paper with your fingers like heathens. Was that what you were going to do? I’ll bet your mother wouldn’t have wanted you doing that. Where are the plates, now, and the knives and forks?”

  She bustled round at their direction, put plates around the kitchen table, the
n knives and forks. Finally she took the bundle from Matthew and started sharing it out. The four children watched her, a feeling of impending disaster not yet banished from the older ones’ stomachs, in spite of the woman’s good humour and air of warmth.

  “There we are then. A meal fit for a king. Sit down and eat it while it’s still warm.”

  They all sat down, but as she started in on the fish with her unaccustomed knife and fork, Annie said “Thank you very much for the cake. We’ll like that very much. You don’t have to stay.”

  It sounded very rude, but the woman showed no sign of having taken offence.

  “Oh, I think I do,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “You see, I’ve been upstairs.”

  In that moment their world shattered around them. Then they knew for sure. But the two smallest children went on eating hungrily, quite unconscious.

  “You’d no right!” said Matthew, more confidently this time.

  “No, I hadn’t, I admit. But you see I called up, and all the reply I got was a sort of grunting sound. I thought someone must be ill. Now eat up and we’ll discuss it afterwards.” She sat down and looked at them, plump, comfortable and motherly. “I’m not here to harm you, you know. But we’ve got to think what’s best for you all.”

  They ate up with the best will they could muster. When they were finished, Mrs O’Keefe took the plates to the sink and began to wash them up.

  “It’s still nice and sunny outside,” she said. “Why don’t the young ones go out again to play?”

  Greg and Jamie were very willing, and as she watched them in the garden Mrs O’Keefe enquired about their ages and names and what their characters were. “I love little ones,” she said. Matthew and Annie dried the plates and cutlery and then, so naturally that nothing needed to be said, they all sat down again at the kitchen table and looked at each other.

  “How long has he been like that?” asked Mrs O’Keefe.

  “Oh, he’s ill,” said Annie quickly. “Just a few days. He’ll get better.”

  Mrs O’Keefe looked reproachful and shook her head.

  “Annie love, I’m not a great brain but I’ve seen a bit of life, and I know that a man doesn’t get to that state in a few days. I want to help you, child, but I can do nothing if all you do is tell me lies.”

  The two children looked at each other. They had grown so close to each other in the last few months that normally they would have known instinctively what the other wanted to do. But this situation was unheard of, unforeseen, so that now they were uncertain. Lying was endemic to them, and it needed a great shift in attitude to start telling the truth. Annie looked down at the table, leaving the decision to her brother.

  “Since mother died,” said Matthew at last. Mrs O’Keefe’s face was fused with an emotion she could not suppress.

  “You poor children!” she said.

  “The ambulance people brought him home, and he just seemed—well, almost knocked out. He kept talking about being punished and that, and didn’t want to eat or go out. . . .”

  “And things have gone from bad to worse since then?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why did you tell no one?”

  “We were afraid to. You see, we thought they’d decide to take us into care.”

  “Sure and you could do with a bit of care!”

  “No! We’re a family! We want to stay together. And me and Annie can manage. We have done for months now.”

  “Please go away and leave us alone!” pleaded Annie. “And don’t tell anyone about us, either. We’re all right. You can see the little ones are all right.”

  Mrs O’Keefe leaned forward over the table.

  “But your father: Is he all right?”

  They looked at her defensively.

  “But there’s nothing we can do about him,” said Matthew. “That’s just how he is. We make sure he eats and washes and changes his clothes.”

  Mrs O’Keefe shook her head in reproof.

  “Are you sure nobody else can do anything for him? And if you’d got help earlier, don’t you think there’d be a better chance of getting him normal again?”

  They looked down at the table. It was something that they had barely considered, had subconsciously decided to put out of their minds.

  “I did say he ought to see a doctor,” said Matthew, looking down at the table.

  “But you did nothing about it. He needs a doctor, he needs a priest, he needs a psychiatrist if we can find one that’s halfway sensible. He needs all sorts of things, your dad, but he’s not getting them, is he?”

  There was silence.

  “No,” said Annie at last.

  But Matthew resisted the guilt she was trying to thrust on him.

  “He deserved it!” he cried passionately. “After what he did to Mum when she was ill.”

  “And is that for you to judge, child? Sure, you’re talking as if you were God—at thirteen! What you mean is he . . . went with my daughter-in-law, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “If you condemned to madness all the men who’ve been with Carmen, the country’s asylums would be full to bursting! Men are weak creatures—you’ll be weak yourself when you grow up, Matthew—and she threw out her nets and trapped them one after another. But the affairs never lasted long, and they mostly went back to their families in the end. It’s her you should blame more than the men.”

  After a moment’s thought Matthew said, “If she just . . . had them for a bit then chucked them aside, why did she come round here after him?”

  “I don’t know, Matthew,” said Mrs O’Keefe, shaking her head. “Maybe she hadn’t quite finished with him, maybe it was a bit more serious than the others. Maybe it was always the men who got tired and threw her aside. I don’t know anything about her love affairs—‘love’! what a word!—and I don’t want to. I can’t explain what Carmen might do. She’s a woman with no morals and no scruples—I’ll make no bones about that! If she wants something, even if it’s someone else’s, she just goes after it.”

  “She’s horrible!” said Annie, passionately, but remembering to talk about her as if she were still alive.

  “I’ll not quarrel with that. And my Rob’s better off without her—even he is beginning to see that.”

  The mention of her son brought back to Matthew’s mind the whole question of who had murdered her.

  “Does anyone know where she’s gone?” he asked cunningly.

  “Not an idea in the world,” said Mrs O’Keefe, with a wave of her hand. “No one’s seen her and no one’s heard from her. The police have had no news of her, and to tell you the truth they’re not very interested because they know from me the type of woman she is. It’s good riddance, say I.”

  “Because someone said the other day that she could still be in Leeds,” said Matthew. “She could be in some suburb on the other side of the city.”

  “I’d be willing to bet someone would have seen her if so. She isn’t one to sit at home slaving over a sink, not Carmen. She’s always out and about. My bet is that she’ll have found herself some businessman who wants a good time, God help him, and she’ll be in Manchester or Birmingham or somewhere like that.”

  “I expect you’re right,” said Annie solemnly.

  “Now, we’re getting off the subject. It’s neither here nor there who Carmen has gone off with nor where she is. The question is: What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t see why you have to do anything,” said Annie bitterly. “We’re all right as we are. You can see the young ones have been properly fed and kept clean and tidy.”

  “Annie love, your father needs attention,” said Mrs O’Keefe, summoning up all her peasant common sense against this childish irrationality. “Medical attention. No doctor in the world is going to let things go on as they are.” She looked at the girl and then said gently, “You’d have been found out before summer was over, you know. Summer’s the time when you expect to see people. The neighbours would have started wondering about
your father before long. Eventually the little ones would have talked—maybe they have already, but people haven’t quite caught on. And before long your father was bound to be ill—physically ill—and then you’d have had to call a doctor.”

  “But we don’t want to be taken into care!” said Matthew passionately. “Just separated and handed over to this family and that one.”

  “And did I say anything about that?” demanded Mrs O’Keefe. “Sure, I never did. Now, the first thing is to get the doctor to your dad. We need to know how bad the poor fellow is and what the chances are that he might recover. That’ll be for Monday morning. But whatever happens it’s going to be a long process. The best thing is for me to move in now—”

  “You?”

  “I don’t see any alternative. The doctor will want to know there’s someone looking after you. I think we’d better conjure up some kind of story—”

  She looked at the two serious childish faces opposite her, seriously thinking as they took in the new situation.

  “We invented an Auntie Maureen,” said Annie. “For her. We said she was here on a visit from Ireland. And we talked about her to one or two other people—so that they thought there was someone in the family taking an interest.”

  “Well, I can’t suddenly become a Maureen,” said Mrs O’Keefe briskly. “People know me here and know that I’m a Constance. But I can say your Auntie Maureen is a friend of mine in Ireland and that she phoned me to come round and see that you were all right.”

  “What will you say about Dad?” Matthew asked.

  “We’d better not tell the truth, had we? Make you children a nine-days’ wonder at St Joseph’s. I think we could say that all the work and worry and responsibility finally got to him and he’s had some kind of nervous breakdown.”

  “Yes!” said the children. “Like it was recent.”

  “That’s it. But I’m not sure that will wash with the doctor. I’d better stay closer to the truth with him but tell him that I’m here indefinitely to look after you all. Nobody’s going to come rushing round to take you all into care, you know. It’s a last resort.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Annie.