Lisa Logan

by Marie Joseph

  ‘Not long, love.’ Richard kissed her face. ‘I’ll go upstairs and fetch a blanket. I can’t see them getting here for at least ten minutes.’

  Lisa heard his feet pounding on the uncarpeted stairs. When he came back they wrapped the blanket round the still figure with the unequal staring eyes. She leaned against him, drawing solace from his nearness, so grateful for his presence that their future relationship was cemented in that moment.

  Outside the small sash window over the slopstone the sky had darkened. The room was full of shifting shadows, and Richard endeavoured to conceal his horror at the smell of poverty emanating from the huddled heap of skin and bones beneath the blanket. Never in a million years could he have imagined that things were as bad as this. This woman, this grey-faced woman who was Lisa’s mother, had no more flesh on her than a starling fallen from a nest. Never a sensitive man and totally lacking the imagination to identify completely with others, what would normally have been compassion turned in Richard’s case to a searing anger.

  How had they …? In his silent fury ‘they’ could have been anyone – the local authorities, the ministry, the medical profession, even the government down in London. How could bureaucracy let this be? Richard’s deep-rooted sense of integrity showed itself in the jutting of his jaw, the flushing of his sensitive fair skin. This woman’s husband deserved a flogging, a whipping with a cat o’ nine tails till his back hung in strips like a peeled cane.

  Even as he cursed a man he had never known, Delia’s face changed to a ghastly putty colour. With one side of her face rigid and unmoving, the other side twitched and contorted itself into a tortuous expression. Underneath the blanket one knee raised convulsively. Then was still.

  ‘Now you just have to stop it,’ Richard was to say over and over again in the weeks that followed the quiet funeral and Delia’s burial in a corner of a bleak and windy cemetery. ‘Feeling remorse is natural when someone close to us dies. We blame ourselves for not being more considerate, more loving, especially when death comes suddenly.’ He was very sure of his facts. ‘Your mother, from what you tell me, had stopped wanting to live a long time ago.’

  ‘Ever since my father went away.’ Lisa had sobbed out the truth on Richard’s shoulder, sensing without seeing the tightening of his jaw and the repugnance in his eyes. ‘Or since her lover deserted her.’

  Once again she was seeing events as if they were played out on a cinema screen, her mother as the deserted wife with Patrick Grey in the role of villain. ‘You can’t imagine what she was like years ago. My mother was so joyous, so gay, so dressed just right. Her appearance was as important to her as food and drink. More important.’ She began to cry again. ‘My father used to say she didn’t eat enough to keep a bird alive, so when she wouldn’t eat the meals I made her it was harder for me to realize … oh, Richard, the doctor who signed the death certificate said she was suffering from malnutrition. Can’t you see that was – has to be my fault?’

  ‘Stop it,’ Richard said again. ‘You’ll have to stop blaming yourself, Lisa. The doctor wasn’t being critical, he was merely stating a fact.’ Shaking her, he held Lisa away from him. ‘Some people are born to be survivors, some are not. But you are,’ he said more gently. ‘You never stopped work even though I told you people would understand and wait a while for their orders. I don’t know how you did it, if you want the truth. Oh, yes, the good Lord definitely made you a survivor when He doled out attributes.’ His kiss was firm on her trembling lips. ‘And when we’re married you’ll never need to worry again. You’re never going to feel so alone again, darling. Not with me around.’

  He was so practical, so much in control, that Lisa could only marvel at his solid unflappability. Of course, he had never known her mother, she reminded herself, and it was possible that coping with funeral arrangements and the awful trappings of death brought out the organizing ability of a man like Richard.

  He had arranged immediately for her to stay with Miss Howarth, refusing to condone the idea of Lisa living alone even temporarily in the house in Mill Street. Her grief came in recurrent waves, almost paralysing her with its intensity, and it was at moments like this that the ignoble thought crept into her subconscious: had Delia’s death rid Richard of the burden of a future mother-in-law who would have done him less than credit? What people thought mattered to Richard. He wasn’t a cruel man, but Delia’s shuffling, chain-smoking presence in his house would have been an affront to the respectability he cherished so much.

  Lisa was alone in the little house in Mill Street one Sunday morning, sorting out her personal belongings, emptying drawers so that the saleroom men could come and take away the furniture, when a knock came at the door.

  ‘Hello there, Lisa Logan!’

  Jonathan Grey stood there, tall and slightly rakish-looking in a long, belted raincoat with the collar turned up against the rain, and a dark brown trilby with a wide brim dipping over one eye.

  ‘Jonathan!’ Lisa was so surprised, so filled with an emotion she couldn’t define, that she could only gape at him, foolishly regretting her old skirt and the blue turban covering her hair.

  ‘We got your letter about your mother and about the house.’ He was very formal, very solicitous. ‘May I come in?’

  In the back living-room he shook the rain from his trilby into the slopstone, then laid the hat down on the bare table. His silly little sideburns had gone, she noticed, along with the neat moustache. She was suddenly lost for words, so aware of him that she began to tremble.

  ‘Thank you for the letter about my mother,’ he said. He stared straight at her with a whimsical expression. ‘My father didn’t feel … didn’t feel he could reply.’

  ‘Of course not.’ Lisa flushed. ‘A letter might have given my mother ideas.’

  He was standing too close to her. She saw the flash of irritation in his eyes. ‘It was over long ago, and you know it.’

  Against her will Lisa felt her mouth curl upwards into a smirk. ‘I will soon be able,’ she said clearly, ‘to repay the considerable debt I owe your father for the two years’ rent and the monthly delivery of coal. It’s all written down. I’ve kept a record of every penny. So will you tell him, please?’

  Making her jump, Jonathan banged the flat of his hand down hard on the table. ‘God, but you never let up, do you? You’re still that same impossible kid I shoved under a wave in the sea in Brittany!’ A Machiavellian twinkle came into his eyes. ‘You look about as fetching in that bloody turban as you looked in that terrible rubber bathing cap you wore. Remember when I kissed you at the dark of the moon?’

  ‘No!’ Her denial was swift and absolute. ‘I do not remember.’ She turned her hot face away from his penetrating gaze. ‘What happened to your moustache? Did your fiancée make you shave it off? I remember her at school, you know. A big girl with mousey hair.’

  ‘Average height with auburn hair.’ Jonathan grinned. ‘So you know Amy, do you? I suppose you saw the engagement in the paper? Her parents put it in.’ He hesitated momentarily. ‘And you’re to be Mrs Richard Carr? Thick-set, middle-aged bloke with a ginger tash.’

  ‘Not forty yet, broad-shouldered and fair,’ Lisa flashed back. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I have my spies.’ He picked up the trilby and pinched the brim into an even wavier shape. ‘Look. I have the car outside. Leave all this.’ He nodded at the half-packed carton on the beef-tea-coloured oilcloth. ‘It’s stopped raining. Come out for a spin. You’re as pale as a vanilla blancmange. And take that bloody scarf off your head. I’m not taking you in a pub looking like that.’

  ‘Why should I come for a drink with you?’ Lisa realized she was beginning to feel light-headed. Sorting her mother’s few belongings into two piles, one to throw out and the other to keep for what she supposed could be called sentimental reasons, seemed to have drained her strength. She had started a period that morning and the familiar cramp spasmed inside her with a dull aching grind. ‘You do nothing but insult me.’

 
Flourishing the brown trilby as if it were a courtier’s hat plumed with feathers, Jonathan held it over his stomach and bowed low. ‘See that patch of blue sky out there? Over those mucky chimney pots? The sun is coming out, Lisa Logan, and I know a place where we can sit and watch it sparkling on the River Ribble. I will expunge my boorish behaviour by paying you lavish compliments.’ His eyes twinkled. ‘That is, if you will remove that thing from your head and wash your face. I will not flirt with a dirty face. What man could?’

  For a crazy moment their eyes held. ‘You shouldn’t say things like that,’ she told him, flustered, turning away. But even as she spoke she was untying the knot on top of her head, shaking her hair loose and dabbing at her cheeks with her handkerchief. ‘What if we’re seen?’

  ‘By your fiancé?’

  ‘Or yours.’

  ‘You’re not serious?’

  Lisa considered. ‘No, I’m not. Today I don’t give a damn.’

  ‘That’s what misery does.’ He flicked the rim of the cardboard carton with his finger. ‘You can grieve for so long, then wham! You have to take off and to hell with it all. For a little while. Ready?’

  ‘Ready,’ she said, and when he helped her on with her coat and she felt his fingers lightly press her neck, she wanted to turn round and cry against his chest. But, holding herself stiffly, she walked before him to the front door, seeing Mrs Ellis’s net curtains twitch as she climbed, showing too much leg, into the passenger seat of the low car which crouched at the kerb like a shiny green beetle.

  ‘I came round,’ Richard grumbled. ‘I suddenly couldn’t bear to think of your packing things away in that room.’ He pushed his thick straight hair back from his forehead, a gesture she was to become familiar with whenever he was holding his irritation in check. ‘The woman next door came out and told me you’d gone off with a man in a green sports car.’

  ‘Jonathan Grey,’ she told him. ‘His father is the one who let my mother and me live rent-free for all that time. We had things to discuss.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Such as the money I intend to pay his father back. When I’ve saved it,’ Lisa said.

  They were in the back room of the shop, quiet for the moment with Miss Howarth and May gone for a meat-pie and a cup of tea in Tippings café in the Market House. Lisa was finishing off and neatening a zip along the side of a day pillow which matched the folded curtains of marigold-splashed cretonne on the worktable.

  ‘I will give you the money.’ Richard turned back a corner of a curtain, examining the finish in an absent-minded way. ‘You don’t need to wait till we’re married, I’ll give it to you now. The sooner you put all that business with the Grey family behind you the better.’

  ‘No!’ Lisa threw the cushion down in disgust. She had never liked the large flowery pattern anyway, but there were times when a customer’s wishes had to be adhered to whatever her own reservations. ‘Don’t you see? For my mother’s sake that debt has to be paid, and by me!’ Her eyes seemed unfocused in their fierce resolution. ‘When my career really takes off – and it is going to, Richard – I am never going to owe any man a penny. My mother used to say I was like my father, and in some ways I suppose I am, but not in that way. Never, never will I see my debts piling up, bills shoved in drawers, letters unopened. It can happen so easily, Richard, but it’s not going to happen to me!’

  ‘But we’re going to be married!’ He was honestly bewildered, and as usual it showed in the flushing of his sensitive skin. ‘I will be your husband, responsible for your debts.’ He tried a smile. ‘I’ve told you, Lisa. When you marry me there won’t be the need for you to work. We’ve discussed it over and over.’ A patronizing chuckle crept into his voice. ‘You can keep up with your designing if you want to – I agree it would be a shame to drop that when it’s going so well.’ He spread both hands wide. ‘It’s a wife I want, and a mother for Irene, not a career-mad woman dashing off here, there and everywhere with a portfolio of patterns underneath her arm.’

  Lisa stared at him in disbelief. ‘Then I won’t marry you,’ she said coldly.

  In a second, disregarding the fact that Miss Howarth and May could have walked in by the back door, she was in his arms. And his arms were strength, reassurance, an Angus-smoothing of her hair, a driving away of the past two years. When he kissed her she felt that source of strength seep into her body, as she knew that with this man the memory of her mother’s haggard twisted face might fade from her memory.

  ‘Are you sure I will be able to make you happy?’

  As he held her away from him, Richard’s face was a study. ‘But just being with you is happiness. Or, to put it another way, if you left me my life would have no meaning.’

  ‘Oh, Richard… .’

  His confidence restored by Lisa’s response to his kiss, Richard touched the tip of her nose lightly with his forefinger. ‘You’ll be surprised how poetical I can be when I get carried away.’ All at once his face sobered. ‘I just want to take care of you, absolve you from all anxiety, cherish you. Does that make me into some kind of monster?’

  ‘I’ll never be your shadow, Richard. I warn you. There’s a part of me that will always want to stand on its own two feet.’

  A glimmer of determination flickered for a second in the light-blue eyes. ‘I’ll stand back from you,’ he promised. ‘If that’s what you want.’

  ‘It’s what I need,’ she said simply.

  ‘Then so be it,’ he said, his eyes and face alight with love.

  PART THREE

  Seven

  ONE EARLY SUMMER evening in 1941 Lisa Carr tucked her baby son into his cot, looked in on her husband who was deep in a sweat-drenched sleep following a severe dose of flu, then went downstairs.

  ‘Your turn now, Irene.’ Lisa heard the jollying tone in her voice, despising herself for it. Her stepdaughter, a matronly, overweight eleven-year-old, raised blue eyes ceilingwards, then went on reading the book on her lap.

  Lisa dabbed at the wet patch on the front of her skirt. Why had no one ever told her that boy babies peed upwards? Only by turning her head sharply sideways had she missed getting it full in her face. For a moment she considered recounting the incident to the stolid child on the sofa, then knew it would have been a waste of time. Irene Carr had an invisible sign on her forehead which read: ‘Don’t make jokes to me, because I won’t laugh, so there!’

  ‘Time for bed.’ Lisa felt exasperation thick in her throat as Irene turned a page with a languid hand. She fought to control her annoyance. The day had called for every ounce of her slipping control. Millie Schofield’s face had set into its tragedy queen’s mask when Lisa had asked her to stay on after her finishing time of six o’clock.

  ‘I do have a life of my own,’ her expression said, but Lisa had ignored her. The only way to tolerate the housekeeper’s presence was to ignore her. Quietly, to herself, Lisa had rationalized the position. Without Millie’s brooding presence she would find herself tied to the house at twenty-one, a slave to her husband, her baby, and a stepdaughter who hated her with a concentrated venom. Just for a moment Lisa allowed herself the indulgence of a healthy surge of pure hatred against the strange woman who, without being a relative, was an integral part of the household. There was something about Millie’s long-suffering face that made Lisa more determined than ever to insist on following her burgeoning career. The shop had been inundated with orders for black-out curtains, which Lisa’s ingenuity had fashioned into unobtrusive necessities as she lined velvets and brocades with the shiny black cotton, positioning the ugly material on the outside.

  Irene turned another page, sighing as if willing Lisa to move away.

  ‘Will you please put that book down?’ Lisa spoke slowly, forcing a calmness she was far from feeling. ‘Go upstairs and run your bath. I’ll be up in ten minutes to see you into bed.’

  ‘I’m hungry.’ Irene widened round blue eyes. ‘It’s ages since I had my tea.’

  Picking up a fluffy rabbit from the floor,
Lisa held it against her face in a small unconscious gesture of comfort. ‘You’ve had three biscuits since then.’ She tried to instil a teasing note in her voice. ‘Look at your tummy. It’s like a little football.’

  ‘It’s not as fat as yours was before Peter came out.’ The round eyes narrowed. ‘Millie said you must be having twins.’

  Lisa coloured to the roots of her hair. There was something very wrong in the way this child discussed her with Millie. Irene nodded her curly head up and down twice.

  ‘Millie says she’s sorry for Peter.’

  ‘She’s what?’

  ‘Sorry. Because you give him milk from a bottle instead of from you-know-where.’

  ‘Oh, my God!’

  Irene’s face set in a satisfied smugness. ‘It’s wicked to use God as a swear word. It’s worse than saying damn.’

  Lisa closed her eyes to shut out the sight of the round fat face. Her fingers itched to slap the hamster cheeks until they flamed an even brighter crimson. Then, as Irene trotted slap-footed en route for the kitchen and the biscuit tin, the urge to smack her disappeared, to be replaced by a desire to take the matronly figure into her arms, whispering words of affection, a pleading to be accepted.

  Sighing, she picked up the open book from the sofa and pushed it out of sight on the shelf underneath the coffee table. The answer, she knew, was to insist to Richard that Millie went. But that would mean staying at home all day, presumably turning her back on her pattern books, her sketch pad, her increasing clientele who asked her advice on anything from the colour of their bathroom curtains to the bridesmaids’ dresses at their daughters’ weddings. Three outside workers now made up clothes from Lisa’s own designs, plain and expensive, each one adapted to the buyer’s figure, disguising her faults, emphasizing her better points. Her creations were unique, and soon she would have labels made to sew into them. Her own trademark – LISA LOGAN, she had decided, the alliteration giving greater impact than Lisa Carr. She winced as she heard the clang of the biscuit tin. Lisa Logan dresses, evening gowns, hostess frocks, housecoats, curtains, spreads, cushion covers – all with her imprint. And someday, who knew? Fabrics woven to her own design at one of the town’s cotton mills? Shops in other towns?