She studied him while he led her expertly through a foxtrot. He had dark hair, eyes that were nearly black, a fresh complexion and thick dark eyebrows. When he closed his eyes, the lashes curled up on his cheeks. It was quite a good face, she decided. Spoiled slightly by a weakish chin, yet saved by a strong nose. Nice. Comfortable. She felt right in his arms. Yes, they fitted together. Mike would be furious, wouldn’t he? She looked round and caught no sight of her boyfriend; nor could she see his little French girl. Ah well. Mike was gone, possibly forever. A cold fist seemed to close around her stomach, and she shivered in spite of the intense heat.
‘They’ve gone,’ he said into her hair. ‘He wasn’t good enough for you anyway. I’ve been watching you for the past hour. Near to tears, weren’t you?’
She nodded.
‘Not worth it, me dearie. He’s a mere child, and here you are dancing with a man. That’s why he left. He stormed out with that awful girl in the red dress as soon as he saw us talking.’
‘Oh.’ She liked him. Especially if he thought Josianne was awful. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Geoff. Geoff Saunders.’
‘Kate Murray. Are you married?’
‘No. I’m going to marry you.’
She gulped back another ‘oh’.
‘Knew as soon as I saw you. I’m middle-management with Transglobe Plastics, good prospects, not a bad looker . . .’
‘Hang on. I’m only eighteen!’
‘So what?’
‘I’ve got to get through college.’
‘I can wait.’ The music stopped and the last waltz was announced. Without asking, he folded her in his arms and led her round the floor. ‘You dance quite well for a young one,’ he commented. ‘What’ll you do at college?’
‘Art main, History and English subsids.’
‘Teaching?’
‘Yes.’
They danced the rest of the waltz in silence, then, after Kate had been to tidy herself in the ladies’ room, he took her out into a clear moonlit night and walked her down to his car. ‘I’ll drive you home.’
‘I’ve not to get in cars with strange men.’
With great ceremony and much flourish, he extracted a card from his wallet. ‘At your service, ma’am. Geoffrey Saunders BSc, ARCS.’
‘Are you a surgeon or something?’
‘No. College of Science, Royal, Associate of. Ma’am!’ He clicked his heels and held open the door. ‘I don’t bite, I change my socks every day and my mother is well looked after. Yes, I am interested in you both body and mind, but I shall not rape you at the traffic lights. Not tonight, anyway.’
She began to giggle. ‘You’re hopeless, Mr Saunders. And you’re only seven years younger than my mother! My dad will go mad if he hears I’ve been out with an older man.’
‘I shan’t tell him if you don’t.’
‘OK. But drop me on Derby Street.’
When he stopped the car at the bottom of View Street, she didn’t know what to expect. He was a grown man after all, an adult, probably with experience too. Yes, he was too handsome to be inexperienced. She decided to go for the gauche tack. Perhaps if she came over all innocent, he would like her better. ‘What do we do now?’ she asked sweetly.
He smiled. ‘Well, I ask if I can see you again and you say no.’
‘OK. We’ll take that bit as read. What then?’
‘I find out your address, send flowers and chocolates – oh, and a Valentine’s card . . .’
‘My mother will kill me!’
‘Then I beat down your door, knock out your father, pick you up on my white horse and we ride off together into . . .’
‘An orange sunset with a touch of burnt umber,’ she concluded for him, thinking of her father. ‘Right. I’ll see you again.’
‘Tomorrow?’
She shook her head. ‘I’d play my hand closer to my chest if I were you. You’ve already proposed, which I felt was a bit premature and immature . . .’
‘Well, hush my mouth!’ This was said in a perfect Southern drawl.
‘Next week. I’ll see you next week. Pick me up here on Friday at seven-thirty.’
‘Fine. Now, I kiss you.’
‘Is that obligatory?’
‘Absolutely compulsory. I cannot allow you to leave these premises without being kissed. It’s something to do with car tax.’
‘And insurance?’
‘Naturally.’
And it was natural, too. It created in Kate the first real sexual feelings she had ever had in her young life. She was confused. Somewhere inside, a knife still twisted in the raw wound left by Mike. But she was young, desirable, wanted by this stranger. That heartbreak could turn to bliss in such a short space of time was a source of great wonderment to her. She wanted more, more kisses and more than kisses. He smelled good, felt good, tasted right and held her properly.
He released her and pushed her towards the passenger door. ‘You’d better go. I knew as soon as I saw you . . . You’d better go, Kate.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why. I’ll have to be careful. I’ve never been with anyone so much younger than myself.’
‘But I want . . .’
‘To get through college.’
‘Yes. But I think I could . . . learn to like you. Only I’m all mixed up about Mike and that girl and everything.’
‘OK. See me next Friday, then.’
‘Bye.’
‘Bye, darling.’
She stood on the pavement while the car made a big circle and drove away. No-one had ever called her darling before; darling was something out of the films. The whole thing was like a fairy story. Her legs were suddenly turned to jelly and she leaned against a nearby wall for a bit of support. Mike? God, who the hell had he been? She had a man, a real man, one of her own. And she couldn’t tell anybody about him!
She ran into the house, unaware that her cheeks were glowing, that her step was lighter. ‘What’s up with you?’ growled her father who had lost ten bob on a bent dog. ‘Been at the beer, have you?’
Rachel looked at her daughter and shivered slightly. She recognized that expression. She remembered it reflected in a mirror years ago when she’d been in love. When she’d thought she was in love. ‘Nice time, lass?’
‘Great.’
Rachel glanced at Peter. ‘Was . . . was Mike there?’
‘Eh? Oh Mike, yes, he was there. With his new girlfriend.’
Peter threw his fag-end into the fire. ‘Oh heck,’ he said with false sadness. ‘There’s love’s young dream gone for a running jump, eh?’
‘Pardon?’ Kate glanced at him uncomprehendingly. ‘Oh, him. Yes. Running jump, I’m afraid.’
‘You’ll not be getting married straight after college after all, then?’ Was that a gleam of hope in his eye?
‘I might,’ she said defiantly.
She wept that night, soaking her pillow with bitter tears as she mourned her lost love. Yet hope lingered in her bruised heart, hope for a future that had to become a different dream now. Perhaps Geoff would be in the dream, perhaps he wouldn’t. But the pain lingered till morning and for many days to come, because the pain was bigger than the pleasure.
At college, Kate was treated as very special because she had two men. There was the young one who used to come over from Cheshire on the bus, a fine-looking blond chap, he was, quite muscular yet sensitive. Everyone knew Mike was sensitive because he carried a portfolio. So in this one boy, Kate had just about everything. Who could need more than brawn and sensitivity?
But then there was her other chap, the one who sent roses on exam days, he who turned up in a car with bouquets and chocolates and lovely manners. Many of the girls were smitten with Geoff, but opinion was divided more or less fifty-fifty. Half the girls felt she should settle for someone her own age, while the rest thought Geoff Saunders too great a chance to pass up. He had money, a car, a good job, superb clothes and, as Kate reminded them jovially, excellent taste in women.
But Mike haunted her, often missing lectures just to come over and see her. ‘That bloody French girl!’ he cursed more than once. ‘I could murder our Pamela. If she’d looked after her penfriend, you would never have gone off with this Geoff chap. Is there nothing I can do? Nothing I can say? Remember our grand plan, Kate. How we were going to get married after college and work together on our painting. He’s a pleb. You can’t leave me for a pleb!’
She stared hard at him. The hurt he had dealt her had remained raw for many months. Geoff had been the balm, the booster of her ego, the answer to her pain and sorrow. ‘I haven’t left anyone for anyone. He’s just a good laugh . . .’
But he was more than a good laugh. Geoff was her lover, had been her lover for a few weeks now. And she had given herself so freely once he’d explained about keeping her safe from babies. Now, she could scarcely manage to be in the same room as him without touching and caressing him. Sex was addictive. Sometimes she made up her mind to leave it alone, to resist temptation, yet she quite frequently made the first move. But it was easy to leave Mike alone, because sex with Mike would have meant total commitment – he was that kind of boy. Geoff wasn’t a boy, and that was the difference. If she tired of him, he wouldn’t make a song and dance about it. Not that she would tire. No, he would never become boring. Though his mother was something of a trial.
Then, when Kate was exactly halfway through college, the unthinkable happened. More to the point, something which ought to have happened didn’t, and she found herself in a terrible tear. Two girls had already left college because of being pregnant, and Kate looked like being the third.
They sat in his car outside the main gate. ‘We’ll just have to get married rather earlier than planned,’ he said reasonably. ‘Pity about your finals, but I’m afraid the child will be born before you ever get into the exam room.’
She twisted her skirt between her fingers. ‘Mam’s already upset because I didn’t go to university like Judith. As for my father – he’ll blow his top!’
‘Leave them to me.’
‘But they don’t even know you exist! And I want to finish college, I really do!’
‘I’m sorry. What else can I say, Kate? I took every precaution, but these things are not always a hundred per cent reliable. Get this term over, then we’ll go for a licence.’
‘Oh God!’
‘What?’
‘They’ll want it to be Catholic.’
‘No can do, old girl. My mother would not be seen dead in a papist church. We’ll have to settle for the registry.’
‘That will be like living in sin as far as my family’s concerned.’
‘The details will sort themselves out, my darling. The main thing is to make sure that our baby is born in wedlock.’
‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’
‘There’s no “suppose so” about it. We’re going to get married anyway, aren’t we?’
‘Yes.’ Her voice was small and far away.
‘You’re not still seeing that Mike fellow, are you?’
She shook her head. ‘He’s given up the ghost, found himself another girl.’ No, she didn’t feel any regret or jealousy. She didn’t. And anyway, she was in no position . . .
‘In about six weeks, then?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Our wedding. Six or seven weeks.’
‘Oh, right.’
A fortnight later, she arrived home for the weekend sporting a large diamond twist on the third finger of her left hand.
‘Who?’ Rachel’s eyes were huge with surprise. ‘Geoff who? And what will your father say?’
‘Saunders. His name’s Geoff Saunders and it doesn’t particularly matter what anyone says. We’re getting married . . . soon. He’s older than me, quite a bit older. I met him last year at the leavers’ dance.’
Rachel folded her arms and put her head on one side. ‘And what does he do for a living?’
‘He’s a manager with Transglobe Plastics in Trafford Park.’
‘You’ll finish your course first, though?’
Rachel got no answer, because Peter chose this moment to put in an appearance. He was in a jovial mood, having won several pounds which he had used to improve his demeanour by drinking a few double whiskies. ‘Ah, you’re here, then.’
Kate inhaled deeply. ‘Yes, I’m here. And I’m engaged.’
‘What?’ He stumbled against the sideboard, righting himself immediately with the aid of his cane. ‘To that soft Mike lad? Him with the paintbrush and easel?’
‘No. Someone else. Mam will tell you. I’m off to bed.’
‘Oh no you’re not, young lady! You can stop here and explain yourself. Do you think your mam and I have gone without all these years so that you could get wed before twenty? Judith’s not getting wed, is she? Oh, no. She’ll stop on and do her Masters – likely one of them doctorates too. But you’ve got to go and get mixed up with a man, haven’t you?’
‘Yes. Yes, I have!’
‘Why? Just tell me why the bloody hell . . .’
‘To get away from you.’ Her tone was even. ‘I’m not stopping in this house a minute longer than I have to.’
The silence that followed was deafening. Rachel broke it by fiddling with the fire, poking the ashes through the basket and piling on some fresh coals. ‘Cold for June,’ she muttered lamely.
Peter staggered across to his usual chair. ‘This is all the thanks we get,’ he said to no-one in particular.
‘In life, people tend to get what they deserve,’ said Kate. ‘You have never given me anything except a feeling of inadequacy because I was born female. And as for you, Mam, you’ve supported him by not sticking up for me. I know you’re a spirited woman – I’ve seen you happy and angry – I know you’re capable of normal emotions. But you’ve let him rule you just for the sake of peace. Your attitude to him is almost apologetic . . .’
‘Enough of that!’ snapped Rachel. ‘I’ve done me best, which is more than can be said for some here. You could have been something great, but oh no, you went off to be an ordinary teacher. So don’t be telling me what I should have done. We all know what you should have done, Katherine Murray!’
Peter said nothing. He simply stared at Kate with such hatred that she turned and ran from the room, pounding up the stairs until she reached the relative safety of her bedroom. It was then, as she lay on the bed, that the pain came and she realized that she was no longer pregnant – if indeed she ever had been pregnant. And for some reason she could not explain to herself, she began to cry, sobbing and howling a mixture of sadness and relief. But she clung to Geoff’s ring all the same as she rolled around the bed with the familiar agony of female cramps. Whatever happened, she would marry him after college. No way would she stay in this house of misery.
Dora Saunders’ pale blue eyes were narrowed with shock as she studied Kate’s engagement ring. ‘So, when’s it to be, then?’
‘As soon as she finishes college.’ Geoff’s tone was conciliatory. ‘We shan’t be too far away, Mum. It’s not as if you’re being abandoned to the elements. Not emigrating to China, are we?’ He hugged his fiancée, then pulled his mother into the crook of his other arm. ‘We’ll be a family, a real family.’
Kate and Dora stared at one another, the younger woman feeling a brief shiver of fear as she caught the animosity in Dora’s face. The woman hated her. God, what was she coming into at all?
Dora, meanwhile, was fighting with very mixed emotions. He was getting married, so at least that proved he was normal. There’d been a few snide comments in the Co-op over the years, remarks about lads staying with their mothers longer than was good for them, loud conversations about ‘nancy-boys’ and the like. This would stop the wagging tongues. But he was leaving her. And she’d three bedrooms, there was plenty of space here for them. She repeated her plea, trying not to sound too desperate in front of ‘that girl’. ‘You know you’re welcome here. Stop here till you find somewhere decent.’
‘We’ve
a year to do that.’ Geoff patted his mother’s shoulder. ‘And I’ve plenty for a deposit. We’ll come and see you often, won’t we, Kate?’
‘Yes.’ She looked hard at the woman who would be her mother-in-law. In her own way, this old biddy was nearly as bad as Kate’s father! Kate wanted a life of her own, a life without parents in it. She wanted a cottage with roses . . . no. Mike Wray was gone, gone forever. This was a different kind of love, real love, she told herself stubbornly.
In later years, Kate would look back at this moment, seeing herself, Geoff and Dora caught up, frozen in a sliver of time. Because, somehow, this particular instant summed up everything that was wrong with Kate’s life. It all came down to lack of communication. If there had only been honesty. If Dora could have said, ‘I’m scared of losing him’, if Geoff had said, ‘I can never really leave my mother’. Better still, if the man could have admitted there and then that he knew as little of love as Kate herself did.
And in other areas, too. If Kate had only opened up to her mother, ‘I must marry him, I almost had his child and he needs me’. Or to her father, ‘Dad, I know you started loving me in your own way, I know that way is limited’. But no-one ever said anything. Rachel never expressed her love for her younger daughter; Kate herself seldom gave out any positive emotion. But should she blame herself? Should she? After all, in the summers of ’53 and ’54, she had been so young . . .
In July 1954, Kate and Geoff were married at the registry office in Bolton. Rachel wore a blue suit and an air of great hurt because her daughter’s marriage was not a ‘proper’ one. Dora wept copious tears into a scrap of lace while Judith, down from Oxford for the summer, looked gorgeous in pink. Peter, still drunk from the night before, kept a reasonably low profile as the couple walked in together – there was none of the traditional giving away in this brief ceremony.
Afterwards, the reception was held in the semi Geoff had bought with his dead father’s legacy. One or two of Kate’s old friends from school were present, but the majority of the guests were Geoff’s, colleagues from work who took an abundant interest in plumbing, new windows and the greenhouse at the bottom of the back garden. Kate, who looked stunning in a princess line dress of cream satin, felt everyone’s loneliness during the catered buffet meal. The hired servants seemed to have a better time than anyone – Kate caught them sipping furtively in the kitchen. Her poor mother looked so bereft and solitary seated in a corner, yet every time Kate went near her she was admonished, ‘See to your guests, never mind us.’
Nest of Sorrows Page 7
