A sudden thought brought her eyes narrowing. She knew Audrey and the family had gone away for Christmas to Ivor’s brother’s widow because Maud Duffy on her sister’s other side had taken great pleasure in telling her so, flaunting the fact she knew more about the family’s goings-on than she did. But what if all that had been a tale Audrey knew Maud was sure to tell her? Aye, the more she thought about it, the more it all fitted into place. Abby had invited Audrey and her lot as well as Wilbert to the wedding, she would bet her life on it.
She wished she’d done something before Wilbert had gone now; she should have trusted her instincts that there was more to this reunion than met the eye. She’d always been able to smell a rat before it was stinking. And Ivor there with them all, no doubt enjoying himself and acting the cuddy for the benefit of all and sundry. She’d expected a blow-up when she’d told Abby Ivor was her da but as the months had gone on she’d realised it wasn’t going to happen. Now it looked as though they were going to be one big happy family. So much for Abby worshipping Raymond. Little hypocrite.
Nora walked across the room, smoothing down the coverlet on Wilbert’s bed before going downstairs to the warmth of the kitchen range. It had been icy upstairs, and now she stood holding out her cold hands to the heat before putting the kettle on to boil. She made a cup of tea and added a double measure of whisky to it, drinking it down almost in one go before pouring herself another, again with whisky. She’d go to first Mass and tell Father Finlay the latest. He understood what she had to suffer, did Father Finlay.
After the third whisky-fuelled cup of tea, she sat staring at the half-empty bottle. She was getting through a couple of these a week now, but then what else did she have in life to cheer her?
Maudlin tears began to fall as they did almost every night after she had drunk herself silly.
The little bit she earned was her own after all, she told herself fiercely. If she wanted to treat herself, why shouldn’t she? This time she didn’t bother adding tea to the cup.
Half an hour later her chin fell to her chest and loud snores began to fill the room, but even in sleep her fingers kept tight hold of the cup in her hand.
PART SEVEN
Completing the Circles 1955
Chapter Twenty-six
The tall slim woman who was standing looking out of her kitchen window at a blue March sky dotted with fluffy white clouds could have been any age between twenty and thirty. Few folk would have guessed she was in fact thirty-four years old. Abby did not have the faintest of lines on her face, her thick hair was still as rich and shiny as when she’d been in her teens, and her beauty - now matured to its full potential - was striking.
But the last ten years had not been easy, far from it. For the first five rationing had bit harder than ever, and the ferocious winter of 1947-8 had devastated the potato crop nationwide. In spite of all Abby’s and the other women’s efforts, their fledgling business had almost been finished before it had really begun, their losses substantial.
Ike, as one of the local GPs, had been run off his feet with thousands of cases of pneumonia, pleurisy and hypothermia, all of which had culled the old and very young more ruthlessly than ever Hitler’s bombs had. Abby had no doubt that the eighteen- and nineteen-hour days Ike had put in at this time had contributed to the first of his three heart attacks some months later. The last one in June 1953 had occurred as they had watched Queen Elizabeth’s Coronation in the home of one of Ike’s doctor friends in Manchester - London, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester and Glasgow were the only cities where programmes could be received - and had been fatal. He had died in her arms; but for their two little boys, Abby would not have wanted to go on.
The children’s noisy entrance now into the kitchen brought Abby turning from the window to say quickly, ‘Ssh, darlings, you’ll wake the baby.’ She glanced at the dark-haired infant fast asleep in his pram in a corner of the room.
‘I don’t like the baby.’ Henry, at just two and a half, put his thumb into his mouth and prepared for a sulk. John, from the lofty maturity of six years old, assured their mother, ‘He does really, but Aunty Rowena always used to say Henry was her baby before Enrico came.’
Oh dear. Abby scooped Henry up in her arms, smiled at John and said, ‘How about some lemonade and iced biscuits? Yes?’ And at their delighted cries, she added, ‘But only if you are as quiet as mice, all right? John, you get the plates and, Henry, can you get your and John’s rabbit mugs?’
‘Course I can, Mammy.’ His normal sunniness restored, Henry grinned at her. She put him down and for a moment a miniature Ike was standing in front of her. It was amazing how like his father he was, whereas John had her fair hair and features. Abby tousled Henry’s hair before he marched importantly away on chubby legs, his brow slightly wrinkled in concentration on the task entrusted to him.
When the boys were busy tucking into the iced biscuits and lemonade she had made that morning, Abby walked across to the window again and picked up the letter she had placed on the window-sill earlier. She had read it through a number of times since the postman had delivered it first thing but was no nearer a decision on the contents. Why had this come now? she asked herself, staring out at the pretty garden surrounded by a six-foot fence. Ike had put the fence up shortly after the extension had been completed a few months into their marriage, with the safety of their future children in mind. Since his untimely death it was only recently she had begun to feel herself again, she mused, her life having fallen into a comfortable and reassuringly predictable pattern.
Rowena had finally married Mario two summers before, the pair of them occupying one of the big double bedrooms in the original part of the smallholding. This left Gladys with her own room, and Winnie and Joy in the other. The week after Ike’s heart attack Clara had insisted on moving into the extension to keep Abby company, and Abby hadn’t protested too hard, needing her sister’s love and support as she’d struggled to come to terms with her loss and look after a young child and nine-month-old baby.
But that had been two years ago. Now, with the business doing very well, her children healthy and happy and Clara still living with her, Abby was finally able to reflect on the sweetness of the eight years she’d spent with Ike and get comfort from them without breaking down. She missed him, and every day she mourned the fact that he wouldn’t see his two boys grow up, but over the last few months she’d seen her life settle into a calm, familiar routine which was likely to go on without change into the future.
Her boys had their ‘Grandma’ Gladys to take care of them if she was occupied with business matters, Winnie was perfectly content being a mother and an active partner in the business, and now that little Enrico had arrived, Rowena and Mario declared themselves ecstatic. Even the niggling worry that had occupied Gladys for years had been settled just before Christmas. Vincent, who had been forced to sell up years ago and had moved away down south, had sent his mother a Christmas card with a letter enclosed in which he’d extended an olive branch which Gladys had grasped with both hands. Life, it had seemed, was at last flowing in calm waters.
But now, with one letter, everything had changed. Wilbert had written to say Audrey had died suddenly. A brain haemorrhage, Wilbert’s scrawl explained. She’d gone with no warning. Uncle Ivor had gone to pieces and Jed wasn’t much better, so he and Leonard and Bruce were arranging the funeral. Lucy was going to put on a spread afterwards, and they all hoped she and Clara could come. He and Lucy sent their love as always.
She was a saint, that lass, Abby thought as her eyes scanned the page again. Her mother had done everything she could to split up Wilbert and Lucy, according to her brother, both before and after their marriage, which had been an elopement to prevent Nora spoiling everything at the last moment. How Lucy could stand living in the same house as her mother-in-law Abby didn’t know, but her mother’s emotional blackmail on Wilbert had been effective and when the pair had returned from Gretna Green, Lucy had moved into 12 Rose Street.
&nb
sp; ‘We’re back!’
Abby had been so deep in thought she hadn’t heard Clara come in through the interconnecting door in the hall, and now she turned, the letter still in her hand.
‘What’s wrong?’ Clara said immediately, which meant, Abby presumed, her face had given her away. ‘What’s that?’ her sister added, pointing at Wilbert’s letter. ‘Bad news?’
Three questions in as many seconds. Typical Clara. From being a shy and retiring child she had blossomed into an exuberant and outgoing young woman who was amiable and sociable but did not suffer fools. In reply, Abby handed her the letter, watching her sister’s pretty face as she absorbed the contents.
‘Oh, poor Aunt Audrey.’ Clara’s voice expressed mild compassion but no real sorrow. They hadn’t seen their aunt since she had visited when John was born, and although Abby had corresponded fairly regularly with Audrey, she was little more than a nice warm fixture of the past to Clara. Nevertheless, her sister now said, ‘When are we going then? Are you taking the boys too?’
‘I don’t know if I’m going yet.’ Abby took the letter back and folded it into its envelope.
‘Not going?’ Clara looked shocked. ‘Of course we have to go, Abby. If you’re worried about John and Henry, you know you can leave them here. Gladys is in her element when she has them all to herself.’
‘Who’s taking my name in vain?’ Gladys, white-haired now but still as nimble as ever, poked an enquiring face round the door before walking fully into the room, ruffling the boys’ hair as she passed them still munching away at the iced biscuits. Mario had driven Rowena into town to buy some new curtains for their room and Clara had gone along for the ride and to do some shopping, leaving Winnie, Joy and Gladys in charge of the nursery and any customers. ‘Now you’re back, Clara, I’ve come to tell you Winnie wants some help,’ Gladys said meaningfully. She didn’t hold with gallivanting off into town when there was no real need, even if it was Saturday.
‘All right, all right,’ Clara said lightly. ‘I’d just come to take Enrico back, that’s all, but Abby’s had a letter to say our aunt’s died and they want us to go to the funeral.’
‘They’ve invited us to the funeral if we want to go,’ Abby corrected.
‘Same thing.’ Clara walked across the room and took hold of the handle of the pram. ‘Anyway, I wouldn’t mind going back up to Sunderland, to see if things have changed from how I remember them and meeting everyone again, even Mam.’ There was a slight touch of defiance in her eyes as she glanced across at Abby. ‘I can always go by myself if you don’t want to come.’ So saying she wheeled the pram out of the room and into the hall, manoeuvring it through the interconnecting door.
‘Can we go and play in the garden, Mam?’ John was lifting Henry down from the table as he spoke, ignoring his brother’s protestations that he could do it himself.
‘Put your coats and gloves on then.’ Despite the sun there was a nip in the air which said winter hadn’t quite relinquished its grip yet. ‘And don’t kick the ball over the fence because you won’t be allowed to go and get it.’ This last was for Henry’s benefit. He had just discovered if the ball needed to be retrieved he could escape the confines of the garden for a while; the greenhouses and the comings and goings of customers fascinated him.
Once the children had gone outside, Gladys said, ‘Got time for a cuppa?’
She hadn’t really. By agreeing to take care of Enrico she hadn’t managed to tackle the huge pile of ironing which had been mounting steadily for days while she had been tied up with getting the company books ready for their accountant to look at, but she nodded, saying, ‘As long as you don’t mind me ironing while we talk.’
When the ironing board was up and Gladys had made the tea, they talked of inconsequentials until Gladys suddenly said, ‘You can’t keep her from seeing your mam, you know. Sooner or later she’ll want to put the past to bed.’
There was a long pause. Abby had been thinking of Audrey all morning since she’d got the letter - Audrey and her da who had been the two innocents in the whole miserable dirty tangle - and right at this moment she wanted to confide in someone more than she ever had. The words were there but she couldn’t get them out. Instead she shook her head, saying, ‘My mam’s sheer poison, Gladys, but there are other things I can’t go into which make me feel I never want to set eyes on Sunderland again. But you’re right, I don’t want Clara seeing our mam.’
‘She’s not the wee child you rescued all those years ago, Abby. She’s a young woman of twenty-two with a mind of her own, like her sister.’ Gladys smiled wryly. ‘Perhaps she needs to see that your mother is as terrible as she remembers, I don’t know, but if she’s made up her mind she’s going, she’ll go. What you’ve got to decide is whether you want her to go alone or not.’
‘I don’t.’ It was sharp and definite. She couldn’t do anything about what Clara had seen all those years ago, and that was bad enough for anyone to take on board. But hopefully she could protect her from knowing the rest of it.
‘Then it looks like you’ll be going to Sunderland.’
Abby put down the iron and the two women exchanged a glance at each other. ‘You’ll look after John and Henry? I don’t want to take them.’
‘Course I will. They’ll be as happy as two bugs in a rug with me, you know that.’
Yes, she knew that. The original part of the house where the others lived was the boys’ second home, and Gladys took care of them so often when she was working they wouldn’t turn a hair.
‘Thanks, Gladys.’
‘Don’t thank me, lass. It’s what families are all about.’
‘Not the family I come from.’ There was deep bitterness in her voice.
Gladys finished her tea and rose to her feet. ‘It might be good for you to lay a few ghosts too. You thought of that?’
‘Nothing good will come out of this visit, Gladys. I can assure you of that.’
Gladys’s eyebrows rose at the vehemence in Abby’s tone but she didn’t comment on it. ‘Let me know the arrangements and we’ll go from there. If you want to stay overnight that’s fine by me.’
‘We won’t be staying over.’ If Clara was determined to attend the funeral then she would accompany her in order to act as a buffer between her sister and their mother because, as sure as spring follows winter, she would need to. Their mother would try to hurt Clara or herself or both of them. Perhaps not physically because that time had gone, but in a more dangerous way - in their hearts and minds.
‘See, I told you it would be all right.’ Clara’s whisper was full of satisfaction. ‘And Wilbert and Lucy were so pleased to see us, weren’t they?’
‘Yes, they were.’
‘And Lucy putting on a spread back at Mam’s for everyone. She’s such a sweetheart. But poor Uncle Ivor, he looks terrible. Ill. Still, they were married a long time, him and Aunty Audrey, and they always seemed so happy, didn’t they?’
‘Yes, they did.’
‘But seeing Leonard and Bruce and their wives and families and Jed is lovely, or it would be if the circumstances were different.’ Clara wrinkled her small nose. ‘I didn’t recognise them, did you? Well, I recognised Jed.’ There was a brief pause. ‘You didn’t mind me saying we’d be happy to go back to the house, did you?’
Abby wanted to scream at Clara to stop talking. They had arrived in Bishopwearmouth just in time for the funeral service and then the burial. At the bleak, windswept cemetery she had glanced across at Ivor, standing gaunt and white-faced as he stared down at the coffin, and for a moment she had thought he was going to fling himself into the hole on top of the wooden box. That Wilbert and Lucy thought the same had been apparent when her brother and his wife had each taken one of Ivor’s arms, moving him back a step or two and then continuing to hang on to him until he was safely returned to the funeral car some minutes later. Ivor’s utter misery had disturbed Abby greatly. She wanted to hate him for what he had done to her father and her aunty, but faced with such total
despair . . .
‘Did you mind, Abby? About me saying we’d go back?’
‘What? Oh no, I don’t suppose so.’ Abby drew in a long breath. In fact she minded very much. Her mother was at the house. Was she frightened of her? She considered the question as Clara talked on and the taxi took them towards Rose Street. Not of her mother, she decided, but the lengths to which she might go to hurt Clara. If her mother suspected she hadn’t told Clara about Ivor being their father, she was more than capable of revealing it if she thought it would wound her youngest child. But then Wilbert would know. Abby turned and gazed blindly out of the window. Her mother wouldn’t want that. She relied on Wilbert for a roof over her head and if he found out she had been lying to him all these years, that he was in effect a bastard, the illegitimate offspring of the man he’d always looked on as an uncle . . . Oh, she didn’t know what was going to happen. How could she predict what someone as nasty as her mother might do? But she dreaded seeing her again.
Always I'Ll Remember Page 34
