by Maureen Lee
As soon as her father had cleared his plate, Annie fetched the tea. 'Would you like a pudding? I've got a Battenburg, your favourite.' He'd never said it was his
favourite, but whenever she bought one it rapidly disappeared.
'No, ta,' he grunted. He turned his chair towards the fire, opened the Daily Express and began to read.
The clock struck half past seven. If she didn't leave soon, she'd be late meeting Sylvia - she realised she'd forgotten to change out of her uniform. She stood irresolutely in the middle of the room, wondering whether to go upstairs and change, but the tickets seemed to be burning a hole in her pocket. 'I'll ask now,' she decided. If she didn't, she wouldn't stop thinking about it all night.
She sat down, took a deep breath, and said in a voice that shook for some reason. 'I've got tickets for the school play. They're only ninepence each. I've got the main part. I'm the star. Please come, pleaseV
There was no answer and in the ensuing silence Annie felt as if her words were still there, hanging in the air full of urgent desperation. But Mam had heard, she could tell. Her mother's body shrank. She hunched her shoulders and folded her arms and stared down at her knees, which were clenched together like teeth. Dad looked up from his paper, but instead of looking at Annie, he looked at the television, at the characters talking soundlessly to each other. Then he shook his head, not at Annie, but at the screen, though she knew it was meant for her. There was a finality about the gesture. She knew straight away there was no point in trying to change his mind.
So that was it. They weren't coming.
Jaysus! With a feeling of reckless rage she'd never experienced before, Annie took the tickets from her pocket and threw them on the fire. She watched them curl, turn brown, catch alight, and as they were consumed by the blue, flickering flames, she felt a similar flame begin to kindle in her heart. She loathed
them! She loathed them both, particularly her mother. You never knew, Dad might have come if it hadn't been for her.
The floodgates broke. 'Why didn't you leave us with Auntie Dot?' she cried in a voice raw with hate and anger. 'You're not fit to be parents, either of you.'
Her father was still staring at the screen. He didn't even glance in Annie's direction during her outburst. If he turns the sound up, I'll hit him, she vowed.
'Why don't you listen to mef Suddenly she was screaming. 'I'm your daughter. I'm Annie. Don't you know I'm here.-*'
She had to get through to them! She had to say something that would touch a nerve, instigate a response. 'Marie had an abortion last year. Marie's your other daughter, in case you've forgotten. She had an abortion because she'd been looking for someone to love her, and when I started my periods I thought I was going to die! That's why I failed the scholarship.'
Annie remembered the mothers waiting outside school to collect their children when it was raining, the sportsdays and speechdays which she hadn't bothered to mention because she knew they wouldn't come, the pantomime. But what she'd missed more than anything was a knee to sit on and arms to embrace her when she'd needed them. She wanted to explain the aching misery of her childhood to her parents in words they would understand, but perhaps she wasn't clever enough or literate enough, because she couldn't think of a way of phrasing how much she'd missed their love. Instead, she got to her feet and began to walk back and forth, waving her arms furiously, and all that came pouring out was a stream of bitterness and despair that she'd never known, never dreamt, she'd been storing up for years, perhaps her entire life.
'I hate you. I hate you both!' she screamed finally.
Still silence. Oh, if only they would speak! If only they would answer back. Why didn't they at least make excuses, defend themselves?
Mam's eyes were closed, screwed tight, as if she were shutting everything out. Annie turned on her. 'I saw you going into the Odeon, Mam,' she said brutally. 'There's nothing wrong with you, is there? All this is a sham.' She gestured around the room. 'You're just getting back at me dad because he was out with another woman the night Johnny was killed. You've ruined his life, and you've ruined my and our Marie's lives, because you're so eaten up with sheer bloody spite!' She bent down and began to shake her mother by the shoulders. 'Are you listening to me. Mam?' she demanded shrilly.
'Don't,' said Dad. 'Don't.'
Annie glared at him, ready to continue with her invective, but the words choked in her throat. Jaysus, his face! Why hadn't she noticed how grey it had become, the skin like rubber, pitted and eaten away, his eyes almost invisible in dark, shrunken sockets? In a moment of blinding clarity, she realised he was very ill, that he was dying. She could actually smell the sickness, the sweet, rotten odour of decay that came from somewhere deep inside him.
Annie turned on her heel wordlessly and left the room. She snatched her gabardine mack off the rack in the hall, left the house and walked quickly to the youth club. A vicious wind had sprung up; she shoved her hands in her pockets because she'd forgotten her gloves.
'Where on earth have you been?' Sylvia demanded crossly when Annie came into the church hall where the youth club was held. 'We've lost our place on the table tennis rota.'
But Annie didn't care. 'Let's go for a walk,' she said abruptly.
'A walk?' Sylvia looked startled. 'Gosh, Annie, are
you all right? You haven't changed and you're as white as a sheet.'
'Come on!' Annie marched towards the door.
'I'm coming!'
Annie was halfway down the street by the time Sylvia caught up with her, still struggling into her suede coat.
'Where are we going?'
'Nowhere. Anywhere.'
'Something awful's happened, hasn't it?'
Annie nodded. 'I can't tell you, not yet,' she replied in a flat, emotionless voice. 'I just want to walk.'
'All right, Annie, that's what we'll do.'
Sylvia linked Annie's arm and the two girls walked silently for a long time. After a while, the monotonous clatter of their shoes on the pavement began to get on Annie's nerves. The sound seemed to echo, magnified, in the near-empty streets.
'Talk to me,' she demanded.
'What about?'
'I don't know.'
Sylvia began to speak, hesitantly at first. She told Annie about Italy, about the little village in the south surrounded by misty lavender hills where she was born. They'd lived in a big house, 'Almost as big as a castle, Annie, with little turrets on each corner and acres and acres of vineyard at the back.' During the war, Cecy had been worried she'd be arrested because she was English, but no-one in the village informed on her and she'd been left alone. Bruno had gone away to fight with the Communists in Yugoslavia soon after Sylvia was born and she hadn't seen him till she was four. 'When the war ended and he came back, I was thrilled to discover this tall, magnificent man was my father. I wouldn't let him out of my sight. He had to take me with him everywhere. Then he decided he wasn't prepared to tolerate the Mafia any longer. They virtually ruled the
village and demanded a huge share of the profits from our wine business.' And Sylvia had started school. 'All we did was say prayers, I learnt scarcely anything.' So they'd moved to Turin. 'Such an elegant city, Turin, Annie. It's where Bruno and Cecy met. He has a cousin there, and Cecy was on holiday with one of her aunts. I went to a proper school, but soon Cecy became homesick. She yearned for Liverpool. Now, you'll never guess, Bruno is quite gloriously happy, and Cecy occasionally feels homesick for Italy!'
Sylvia's voice trailed away. Annie saw they'd reached a crossroads and there was a pub on the opposite corner. 'Have you got any money?'
'Of course. How much do you want?'
'I'd like a drink, a whisky.' A whisky had helped once before, the day she'd failed the scholarship. Perhaps a drink would help calm her pounding heart and the turmoil in her stomach.
'You're still in uniform!' Sylvia bit her lip. 'Turn your collar up to hide your tie. Stay away from the bar so the landlord won't see you.'
The pub was pac
ked. Annie found two stools and carried them to a corner. Sylvia was ages getting served at the crowded bar. She arrived looking flustered. 'I got you a double.'
'Ta.'
Two men approached. 'Mind if we join you, girls?'
'Yes,' Sylvia said crisply. 'Go away!'
'Toffee-nosed pair of bitches!' one man muttered audibly.
The whisky had the opposite effect from what Annie hoped for. It made her feel worse, as if a kettle was boiling inside her stomach, emitting clouds of steam, and her heart was pounding even louder.
'I think I'm going to be sick,' she said plaintively.
'Come on, you need some fresh air.'
Back outside, Sylvia said, 'Shall we go to the Grand? You can rest in my room and Cecy will make a nice cup of tea.'
The idea was tempting, but Annie shook her head. 'I should go home,' she said tiredly. Go home and apologise for saying such terrible things.
'What time is it?' she asked when they reached Orlando Street.
'Nearly ten o'clock. We've walked for miles, Annie. I'm surprised we found our way back.'
Annie had left her key in her satchel. She knocked on the door of number thirty-eight. 'Thanks, Sylvia,' she muttered.
'What for?'
'For putting up with me tonight.' Sylvia hadn't complained, not once. 'I'll never forget it.'
Sylvia laughed shyly. 'That's what friends are for. Whatever happens, I'll always be there for you, Annie.'
Sylvia had disappeared by the time Annie knocked a second time. She stepped back and looked up at the window of her parents' room; the curtains were open and the room was in darkness, which meant they were still up. Perhaps Dad was so angry he'd decided not to let her in. Annie rather hoped this was the case. She'd welcome anger, understand it. It was the mute, uncomplaining acceptance of her tirade that had driven her to say more and more wicked things.
She knocked a third time, then peered through the letterbox. Total blackness! Marie wasn't due home for half an hour, when Bruno or Cecy usually brought her in the car.
Perhaps the back door was open; it wasn't usually locked until they went to bed. Annie walked to the end of the street and turned down the narrow passage leading to the back entry which ran between the two
rows of houses. The path was unHt. Dad had warned them never to use the entry in the dark, reminding them of the girl who'd been murdered in such an entry less than a mile away. Remembering, Annie started to run. She stumbled against a dustbin and nearly screamed when she saw two luminous eyes staring at her from on top of a wall. It was a cat, who spat and snarled as she passed. At last, she reached thirty-eight and almost fell into the yard. Her fingers shook as she fumbled with the latch on the back door. She sighed with relief when the door was safely closed behind her.
There was a light in the kitchen, but not the living room, which was odd. Annie squinted through the net curtains, but no-one was there. They must be out, but it was unheard of for her parents to go out unexpectedly. Perhaps one had been taken ill! If so, it was entirely her fault.
She tried the kitchen door, convinced it would be locked, and was surprised to find it open, and even more surprised when it jammed after a few inches. There was something preventing it from opening further. Annie pushed hard with her shoulder and the door gave way.
The smell hit her immediately. Gas, so powerful, that she instinctively put her hands to her face to prevent herself from retching. Then she screamed.
Mam was lying on the floor, her head on a pillow, rosary beads threaded through her still, white fingers. Dad's head was in the oven, his body half draped over his wife's. One of his hands lay protectively on her breast. His poor legs were twisted crookedly because Annie had pushed at them trying to get in.
Annie screamed again and couldn't stop screaming. She screamed so loudly she didn't hear windows opening and irritable voices demanding to know what the hell was going on, nor footsteps in the entry and the
latch lifting on the back door. She was unaware that the back yard was suddenly full of people. It wasn't until she was roughly yanked aside that she came to.
'Jesus Christ!' a man's voice said hoarsely. 'Get the kid out of here. Someone call an ambulance, quick!'
'Come on, luv. Come indoors with me.' Mrs Flaherty from next door took hold of Annie's arm and tried to lead her away.
She stared at the old woman, eyes wild with terror, 'I killed them! I murdered me mam and dad.'
Shrugging off the restraining arm, she fought her way out of the yard. Her ankles struck the pedal of Dad's bike, which was propped against the wall. It slid to the ground with a crash.
There were more people in the entry outside. 'What's going on?' someone asked.
'It's the Harrisons. They've done themselves in.' The speaker's voice throbbed with excitement. 'Gas, I think it was.'
Annie emerged from the entry into Orlando Street. People were pouring out of the pub on the corner. Above the sound of the shouting and the laughter, she could hear a voice calling, 'Empty your glasses, pleaseV There was something strangely familiar about the desperate cry. 'Please come, pleaseV
She stood outside the pub for a long time, being jostled by the crowd and in everyone's way. Several men, unsteady on their feet, began to cross the road and she followed them blindly, then began to run again.
After a while, Annie stopped running. Her breath was raw within her pounding chest, and her legs felt as if they were about to give way. She'd come to the stretch of sand where Dot used to bring them in the summer when they were little, and where she and Sylvia came on warm evenings to talk.
Now, at half past ten on a bitter March night, she felt erself drawn towards the dark isolation offered by the tter-strewn beach . . .
upper Parliament Street
Sylvia stuck her head round the office door. 'Lunch time!' she sang.
'Already?' replied Annie without looking up. Her eyes were glued to the paper in her typewriter. 'Are you sure?'
'You must be the only typist in Liverpool who doesn't watch the clock all day long,' Sylvia said as she came into the tiny room. She wore a knitted shawl with a long fringe over an ankle-length black jersey dress, boots, and a red scarf tied around her head like a gypsy. Gold hoops dangled from her ears. The outfit looked casual, as if it had been thrown on without a thought, yet she'd probably spent ages deciding what to wear that day for Art College.
'I'll just finish this letter,' Annie murmured. Sylvia stood behind and watched, impressed, as her friend's fingers flew over the keys.
'There!' Annie typed 'Yours faithfully', left five clear spaces, then 'J. Rupert', and withdrew the sheet with a flourish. 'I'll do the rest this afternoon.'
'I should think so!' Sylvia lounged against a filing cabinet and said with a twinkle, 'Where's your boss?'
'Now as he's seen you, likely to come in any minute, I reckon.'
The words were scarcely out of her mouth when, through the glazed wall separating her cubbyhole from Jeremy Rupert's luxurious office, they saw a bulky
figure rise from the desk. Sylvia was as visible to him as he was to them. The girls grinned at each other.
Annie's door opened and a man entered. His roly-poly figure and noticeably short arms and legs must have presented a challenge to his tailor. Chubby red cheeks and round spectacles gave him a Billy Bunter look. He had tiny feet and walked in a curiously dainty manner for someone of his bulk. 'Can I have a copy of this please, Annie.' His eyes widened in surprise which both girls knew was entirely faked. 'Oh, hello, Sylvia, I didn't know you were here.'
'Hello, Jeremy.'
Annie could never get used to Sylvia addressing her boss as 'Jeremy'. 'I don't work for him, so if he calls me by my first name, I shall call him by his,' Sylvia argued.
'You look a sight for sore eyes, I must say,' Jeremy Rupert's mouth almost watered as he looked Sylvia up and down.
'Thank you,' Sylvia said prettily. 'I'm about to whisk your secretary off to lunch. She's already five minutes late.'
>
'Then she must take an extra five minutes for her lunch hour,' Annie's boss said expansively. 'No, another ten. In fact, Annie, I don't expect to see you back until two fifteen.'
As his own lunch hour was quite likely to stretch to three or even later, there was no likelihood of him seeing Annie at two fifteen. Nevertheless, she unhooked her coat from behind the door, and said demurely, 'Thank you, Mr Rupert.'
'Well, we're off,' smiled Sylvia. 'Nice seeing you, Jeremy.'
Jeremy Rupert opened the door with exaggerated courtesy. As the girls went through, he put a heavy arm around Sylvia's waist to usher her out. Sylvia paused
deliberately, and with an expression of distaste, took his cuff between her thumb and forefinger and let the arm drop. No words were spoken, but the man smiled as if it were a great joke.
'Is he always like that?' Sylvia asked when they were outside.
'Like what?'
'Like a bloody octopus. He can't keep his hands to himself.'
'I do have a job fighting him off sometimes,' Annie conceded. She'd only worked for Jeremy Rupert for two months. At first, she thought the way he slipped his arm around her waist or shoulders was merely a paternal gesture on his part - he had two daughters slightly older than herself - but lately she'd noticed his hand brush her breasts. She hadn't said anything because she couldn't think of a way to put him off without risking her job. She acted as if the incidents hadn't occurred.
'You should slap his face,' Sylvia said indignantly.
'And get the sack?' Annie hooted.
'If Bruno knew, he'd give the creep a good punch on the nose.'
'In that case, I'd get the sack and Bruno would end up in jail.'
'Bruno wouldn't mind. He'd think it a cause worth fighting for,'
'But I would,' Annie argued. 'It's a good job. I get eight pounds ten a week, which is at least a pound more than in another solicitor's. Not only that, I really enjoy the work since I was promoted.'
