Lisa Logan

by Marie Joseph

  With an effort she brought her concentration back to the business in hand.

  Twenty minutes later she faced her husband on the wide pavement outside the solicitor’s office. ‘I’m going to see Patrick Grey now. It’s got to be done straight away.’

  ‘Then I’m coming with you.’ Richard’s face was set in determined lines.

  ‘No!’ Lisa almost stamped her foot. ‘I have to do this my way. Back there …’ she jerked her head, ‘… you took over from me, Richard. You talked to that man as if I didn’t exist. You still can’t accept that I’m capable of seeing all this through on my own, can you?’ She put a hand on his arm, only to have it shrugged away as the tell-tale flush of anger again reddened his fair skin.

  ‘But first I’m going to the bank.’ She nodded twice. ‘To spoil the look of my new bank balance.’ Her mouth twitched. ‘Don’t look like that, Richard. It’s a debt of honour, that’s all, and if I didn’t feel it was money I’ve earned myself these past years I would wait. This is something I’ve wanted to do for a long time.’

  ‘And I don’t come into it?’

  ‘Not into this. No, Richard.’

  When he turned to walk back to the shop, a stocky, bewildered man with his pork-pie trilby pulled low over his forehead, Lisa watched him for a moment before going in the opposite direction to the bank on the corner.

  When she came out she quickened her steps, almost running along the pavement. She was glad she was wearing her new cherry-red suit with the fluted peplum to the jacket and the long, full skirt. When a man leaned out of the driver’s cab of a passing lorry to whistle at her she smiled at him, enjoying the feel of the skirt round her legs and the bounce of her hair on her shoulders.

  It was all beginning to happen, just as she had dreamed it would. Soon she would be part, in her own right, of the exciting business world, free to expand her ideas, on her way to wiping out for ever the legacy of defeat left by her parents. She would never be another Angus, nor yet another Delia, running from defeat, or wallowing in it. Never. Never. Never!

  The builder’s yard, behind a high brick wall, led to the office, a one-storey building with two modern picture windows. Lisa’s heart beat faster as she walked through the outer office, past a girl typing with two fingers at a huge machine.

  ‘Mr Grey? Mr Patrick Grey?’ At the sound of Lisa’s voice, the girl sighed deeply, picked up an eraser and rubbed at the sheet of figures.

  ‘Through there.’ She nodded at a door. ‘Just knock and go in. Blast! I’ll have to start again.’

  Leaving her tearing the paper out of the machine, Lisa walked to the door and opened it.

  Her first sight of Patrick Grey jolted Lisa into an immediate reaction of acute dismay. Surely this grizzled man with the puffy face and eyes sunk deep into cushions of mottled flesh couldn’t be the Uncle Patrick she remembered from years ago? The man she remembered had been as handsome, in a rather more fleshy way, as Clark Gable in Gone With the Wind, brown-skinned, with black wavy hair springing back from a high forehead, and a strong tanned neck rising from an open shirt.

  She moved forward, hoping the shock wasn’t reflected in her expression. His neck hung in loose folds over his collar; the long sideburns had gone; and his big face was as red and mottled as a slice of polony, his nose bulbous and lumpy, his eyes glazed like a fish on a slab in the fish market.

  ‘Mr Grey?’ She had come prepared to speak with authority, but heard her voice come out in a strangulated whisper.

  Patrick Grey had been for years an alcoholic. Never quite sober, he spent his days craving the next drink which soothed for the moment, then left him trembling in anticipation of another. One part of his fuddled brain told him that the business had been run for the past few years by his son, but the other half still insisted that he came daily into his office, going through the motions, impervious to the sly glances of his workmen, and willing the hours away until he could weave his unsteady way into the nearest bar.

  ‘Yes? What is it, lass?’

  It was obvious he had no idea who she was. Lisa swallowed hard. ‘It’s Lisa. Lisa Logan when you saw me last.’ She hesitated. ‘You knew my parents. My mother, Delia. I’m her daughter. Don’t you remember?’

  For a moment Patrick stared at her with watery, blood-shot eyes, then the big face seemed to crumple. ‘Lisa. Little Lisa. Nay, but tha’s grown into a bonny lass. Nay, when I saw you last you were no bigger than two pennorth of copper. An’ just look at you now! Well, who would’ve thought it?’

  The protruding eyes grew moist. Lisa made a conscious effort to subdue the sympathy flooding her heart.

  ‘I’ve come about the empty warehouse off Nelson Street. I’d like to make you an offer for it,’ she said clearly.

  ‘What warehouse?’ Patrick waved a hand at a stand-chair. ‘Sit down, lass. Warehouse? Nay, you’d best ask my son about that. He’s the one throwing good money after bad, buying bloody ruins.’ A hand crept down to a drawer on the left of the desk then, trembling, came to rest on the wide pink blotter. ‘Nay, I remember you when you was as skinny as a whippet. Now look at you!’ He glanced at his hand as if its trembling astonished him. ‘I was heart sorry to hear about your mother, aye, heart sorry.’

  To Lisa’s horror she saw a tear slide down his cheek. ‘She was a fine woman. A pity she got the wrong end of the stick. Took things too seriously your mother did.’ Lifting his head he stared into Lisa’s shocked face. ‘But I did what I could for her, and no man can do more than that.’

  When Lisa opened her handbag and pushed an envelope across the desk at him, Patrick picked it up and turned it over.

  ‘What’s this, lass?’

  Lisa bit hard at her bottom lip. The scene wasn’t being played at all in the way she had imagined it would be, but she wasn’t going to spare him. He didn’t deserve to be spared. Just for a moment she heard her mother pleading with him on the telephone: ‘Please, Patrick? Please …?’

  ‘It’s the money I owe you. For the rent on the house in Mill Street, and for the coal you had delivered every month. My mother swore she would pay you back one day, so in her name … here it is.’

  ‘Aw, lass. Aw, lass.’ Patrick raised a ravaged face. ‘I don’t want this.’ He was obviously struggling to bring some sort of coherence into his speech. ‘You think I did what I did through guilt. You do, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t guilt, oh, no. There wasn’t no onus on me to do a thing. I’d been trying to tell your mother for a long time that what had been between us was finished.’ He bowed his face into his hands. ‘But she wouldn’t take no.’

  Lisa sat quite still. He was right. Even in his fuddled thinking this man was right. Delia had never been one to take no. Rejection of any kind had always thrown her into a frenzy.

  ‘I’d still rather you took it,’ Lisa mumbled, hating herself for doing so. ‘My mother would have wished it. For her sake you must take it.’

  ‘Aw, God!’

  As the raucous sound broke from Patrick’s throat Lisa stood up, pushing the chair back so that it almost toppled over. Tears were sprouting from the big man’s eyes, were running down his mottled cheeks, and he was making no move to wipe them away.

  ‘Alice,’ he sobbed. ‘Oh, Alice. Come back to me, Alice… .’

  For all her deliberately acquired poise, Lisa felt her insides dissolve with pity. This man was sick, so sick that in spite of the voice of reason telling her he was as sodden with drink as a piece of blotting paper left to soak in water, her inborn kindness took over. Moving quickly round the desk, she laid an arm over the heaving shoulders.

  ‘Uncle Patrick.’ With no feeling of revulsion she began to stroke the thick grey hair. ‘I’m sorry.’ She picked up the envelope. ‘Forget it. I’m going now. Try not to be so … so upset.’

  In the outer office the girl was still typing with two fingers, her small face a mask of agonized concentration. Hesitating for a moment, Lisa noticed a chocolate box at the corn
er of the desk. In strong black capitals someone had printed SWEAR BOX, and when Lisa picked it up it gave a slight rattle.

  ‘Yours?’

  The girl sighed. ‘Yes. Mr Jonathan had the idea it might help.’ Her hand reached out for the eraser. ‘I’ve only been here for three weeks, but I’m getting the hang of it. I am really. It’s just that when I make a mistake I let fly. I’m good at everything but typing, and when I swear I put a penny in the box.’ Her sudden grin lifted her small face into surprising beauty. ‘And I always seem to be cussing when Mr Jonathan’s in.’ She nodded towards a leather-topped desk by the far window. ‘He says I know more swear words than he heard in the war. Better ones,’ she added, not without pride.

  ‘And when the box is full?’ Lisa rattled it again.

  ‘We’re going to buy cream cakes. All round.’ The eraser was applied vigorously to the letter rolled into the typewriter. ‘Bloody hell! I’ve forgotten to protect the carbon again. Now there’ll be a bloody great smudge.’

  Without stopping to think, Lisa took the folded notes from the envelope and pushed them through the slit in the top of the box. ‘Have those and the next year’s swearing on me,’ she said. ‘And persevere with the typing. It’ll come in time.’ Her face was all at once calm again. ‘A long time ago I taught myself how to use a sewing machine, so I know how you feel.’

  Before the girl could close her mouth or even begin to speak, Lisa walked quickly out of the office into the yard, past a lorry loaded with bricks, through the door set into the wall and out into the street again.

  When she heard the voice calling her name she was so engrossed in her thoughts that for a moment she kept on walking, her high heels making a tapping sound on the pavement.

  ‘Lisa!’

  She turned her head to see Jonathan Grey standing there, staring at her soberly, an expression of disbelief on his face.

  ‘I thought I was imagining things when I saw you in the yard just now.’ He touched her arm. ‘I had to come after you to make sure.’

  His eyes were darker than she remembered, but they still had that glint of mockery in their depths, one eyebrow raised as he stared at her with obvious pleasure. ‘Is it too much to hope that you’d come to see me?’

  There was a special look in his eyes, and to her dismay Lisa felt a warm tide of colour flood her face. He was only teasing. Jonathan had always teased, but her legs had turned to water, and her heart was pounding in her breast. With an effort she forced herself to speak calmly.

  ‘I came to see your father about the warehouse in Nelson Street.’ Her chin lifted as she fought to control the totally unexpected tide of emotion. ‘I want to buy it.’ Before he could dare to laugh, she told him of her concern for his father. ‘He’s in such a state. I’ve never seen a man in such a state before. I think you should go to him, Jonathan.’

  ‘My father is always in a state. Whisky-induced.’

  ‘Please, Jonathan.’

  ‘OK, OK. But you mustn’t run away.’ He touched the tip of her nose lightly. ‘I’ll only be a minute and when I come back you have to be here. You can’t walk back into my life like this, then disappear. It wouldn’t be right.’

  What sort of talk was that? Walk back into his life? Lisa stood self-consciously on the corner of the short street, the full, fluted skirt of her cherry-coloured suit billowing up in a wind that seemed to have sprung up from nowhere.

  Had they ever had a normal conversation? Ever once? She thought not. Teasing, fighting, every single meeting somehow charged with some sort of drama. It came to her as she waited that at every single watershed in her life Jonathan had been there. She tucked a strand of hair behind an ear, her expression one of deep concentration. Or was it that his presence provided the excitement and the drama?

  ‘I’ve rung for a taxi. Sylvia will see him into it. He’s OK.’

  ‘Sylvia? The typist?’

  Jonathan laughed. ‘Face of an angel and language of an Irish navvy. Once she gets the hang of our ancient typewriter she’ll be invaluable. The last girl never made a mistake, but she left because of the old man’s goings-on. Sylvia, now, she just gets on with what has to be done. Says she never remembers seeing her father sober, so she knows what to do.’ He took her arm. ‘Now we’re going to see the warehouse in Nelson Street, and on the way there you can tell me why on earth your husband wants to buy it. I wouldn’t have thought it was in a posh enough district to tempt.’

  ‘I want to buy it, not Richard.’ Lisa’s voice was crisp. ‘Along with the empty shop on the corner. I’m going into business on my own account. Lisa Logan fabrics, dresses, soft furnishings. I want the warehouse for a small factory, and the shop as a centre for distribution and retail trade. Mail order,’ she went on. ‘I’ve applied for the trademark, but in the meantime, working as I am now, there are enough orders to keep at least five machinists busy. I know what I’m doing, and with hard work I’m going to succeed. I am, Jonathan.’

  ‘Well, of course you are,’ he said, without breaking his stride. ‘Why the defensive air? Your father was one of the most brilliant businessmen I ever knew. He had flair; if he’d stuck to his stocks and shares instead of trying to pit that brain of his against the bookies, he’d have touched the stars. Of course you’re going to succeed.’

  Lisa turned to stare at him in amazement. ‘Did you really feel that about my father? I got the impression you despised him.’

  ‘Because of what he did? Oh, he’d gone too far down the road to ruin when that happened, but I realized his potential. Surely most folks did?’

  Lisa looked quickly at the dark face, serious for once, and felt tears prick behind her eyes. ‘Do you know, you are the first person to say anything good about my father.’ Her voice was barely audible. ‘Thank you. And thank you for believing I can achieve what I intend to achieve. It matters. It really matters, Jonathan.’

  His hold on her arm tightened, and they walked along in silence. Anyone seeing them would have thought they were husband and wife, or lovers content in their quietness, stopping now and then to smile at each other, their steps matching, a beautiful woman out walking with a tall, more-than-presentable man. Made for each other, the more sentimental watcher might have said.

  When Jonathan unlocked the door of the warehouse the smell of neglect and dampness wrapped round them like a shroud. The windows were thick with the grime of years, and the floorboards were rotted in places, encrusted with dirt.

  ‘Not much of a place.’ Jonathan stretched out a finger and touched a wall. ‘But structurally sound.’ He smiled at Lisa as she walked the length of the building, opening a door, coming back to gaze up at the high ceiling with the single light fitting, cobweb-trimmed. This was not the Lisa he remembered, unsure of herself, flaring into instant retaliation, covering her insecurity by rudeness. This beautiful girl had grown somehow into an awareness of her own potential. Her confidence had a touching quality about it, as if it had been painfully acquired over the years. When she spoke at last her voice seemed to bounce back at him from the bare walls.

  ‘Subject to the surveyor’s report being OK, will you sell, Jonathan?’

  ‘Subject to the surveyor’s report, I may consider it.’

  ‘And if your father says no?’

  ‘My father is incapable of saying either yes or no. The business passed into my hands a long time ago.’

  ‘I upset him, Jonathan.’

  ‘By reminding him of his inglorious past?’

  ‘By giving him the money my mother owed him for the rent and coal in Mill Street.’

  ‘That was cruel, Lisa.’

  ‘I know. Now I know.’

  Jonathan was walking towards her. It was the natural thing to do with the length of the big room separating them. And suddenly her whole instinct was to back away, to put as much distance between them as possible. She closed her eyes for a second and when she opened them he was standing close to her. Her eyes were exactly on a level with his mouth.

  ‘Don’t you
think it’s time we buried the past, Lisa?’ He spoke hesitantly, his mouth slowly forming the words. ‘What happened gave us no chance to be friends. You with your loyalty to your mother, and me with my loyalty to my father. I came to see you once, to ask you to forgive me, but your mother … she shouted me away.’

  ‘She killed herself, Jonathan, waiting for your father.’

  ‘That’s not true!’ He gripped both her hands. ‘You’re making another drama out of it. I thought you’d changed, but in that respect you’re just the same. My father never intended to marry her. He was married already. He’s still married to my mother even though she’s dead.’ He looked down at their joined hands. ‘Face it, Lisa! Stop play-acting and face the truth!’

  Before she could answer Jonathan bent his head. Her great grey-blue eyes sparkled with anger. To stop her contradicting him he touched her lips lightly with his own. Her mouth was moist, sweet-tasting, and he could not move away. Gently he kissed her closed eyelids, the soft contours of her cheeks, lingering at the corner of her mouth before he pulled her up against him. And this time the kiss was a burning heat flooding his body. Strands of her dark hair were entwined in his fingers, and he could feel the softness of her full breasts against him.

  ‘Lisa,’ he groaned. ‘Oh, Lisa. This is how it was always meant to be… .’

  Once, long ago, on a darkened beach in Brittany, she had pushed him away when he kissed her, sending him sprawling on the sand. Then, she had been a child, but now she was a woman who accepted that their desire was mutual. Her limbs felt heavy with a deep languor, and yet she was shaking. There was no strength left in her. At that moment she wanted him so much she would have lain down with him on the dirty floor, and the knowledge saddened and appalled her at one and the same time.

  ‘Jonathan,’ she whispered, when the kiss ended. ‘That shouldn’t have happened. I am married and so are you. I can’t hurt Richard, and you mustn’t hurt your wife.’ Her voice was laboured, as if every word was spoken with difficulty. ‘I want you – oh, please don’t be shocked – I want you, and I know you want me. But we can’t hurt people. There’s been too much hurting between our two families.’