by Annie Groves
‘I’ll tell him you’re already in bed,’ Shirley whispered crossly.
Grace suddenly realised that he’d knocked some minutes ago, and hadn’t done so again. As nobody had answered, he might have gone away, thinking they’d already retired for the night … or were intentionally ignoring him. She dodged past her mother and quickly yanked open the door, hoping he hadn’t disappeared, and gazed straight up into his dark features.
‘For Heaven’s sake, Grace, act with a bit of decorum,’ Shirley muttered angrily at her from behind.
Grace kept her pyjama-clad figure concealed behind the door as she stared wide-eyed at him.
‘Can you come out?’ It was a husky plea.
‘Well … it’s a bit late … and I’m not dressed …’
His eyes dropped to her lightly shivering figure.
‘I’ll wait in the van. Can you get dressed and come out? I need to talk to you.’
‘This is a fine time to come calling, I must say,’ Shirley directed at him while trying to peer past her daughter. ‘No manners,’ she sighed out heavily.
‘Shut up, Mum,’ Grace sent over a shoulder. ‘I’m just off out for a while.’
‘What?’ Shirley barked. ‘You’ll do no such thing, miss. It’s gone ten o’clock …’
‘I’m twenty-three!’ Grace snapped in a suffocated voice. ‘If I want to go out for half an hour on a Sunday night, I will.’
‘I’ve said before, you weren’t this damned rude to me before you started knocking around with …’ Her voice tailed off but both her daughter and her unwanted visitor understood what else she’d been about to say.
‘Wait for me?’ Grace murmured, with a pleading look, and received a nod from Chris in response.
He retreated backwards along the path, muttered, ‘Thanks,’ before swinging away and closing the gate.
‘You in trouble indoors ’cos of me?’ Chris asked Grace when she was seated beside him.
She slanted a look at him and gave a rueful smile. ‘Oh, yeah … but don’t worry, I’ve had enough of her ordering me about and thinking I’m still a kid …’ She glanced away, feeling bashful. Her mother wasn’t the only one who thought her childish: the last time she’d been out with Chris before they broke up he’d implied the same thing … but not for any reason her mother would approve of.
‘Can’t blame her,’ Chris said quietly. ‘Girl like you’s worth protecting from blokes like me, and she knows it.’ He smiled wryly. ‘I was gonna pop by earlier and ask if it’d be alright to come back this evening.’
‘But?’
‘Thought you might say don’t bother … Would you’ve done?’
‘No …’
He put the van in gear and set off with a jerk. After taking a few back turnings he pulled up and opened the window. A moment later he got out his cigarettes and, having lit one, he turned to look at her. ‘Thought you might like to know I’ve been to see me mum. Last week I went to Bexleyheath and she was still living at the address you gave me.’
Grace stared through the dusk at him with large, luminous eyes, not daring to ask. ‘I’m glad,’ she breathed. ‘That’s good …’
‘Is it?’ he countered. ‘Aren’t you gonna ask how it went … this long-awaited reunion?’
Grace swallowed the aching lump in her throat. She didn’t need to ask; she could tell from his tone of voice, from his savagely sardonic expression, that he very much regretted having done what she’d pushed him into doing.
‘Are you blaming me?’ she asked. ‘If you are, I’ll apologise. It wasn’t ever my business, and I know I was wrong to interfere in the first place …’
‘No, you were right,’ he interrupted, dragging on the cigarette and exhaling a stream of smoke out of the window. ‘You’re always right, Grace. It’s done, it’s over and now I can forget about her.’
‘Have you told your dad or Matilda that you went to see her?’
‘No … no point … there’s nothing to say apart from she told me to piss off. Well, not exactly in those words; I suppose she was as polite as she could be, considering I nearly gave her a heart attack. So, it’s done, and now I’m gonna forget all about her.’
‘Are you sure you can do that? You sound too wounded to forget her,’ Grace reasoned gently.
‘I’m not wounded,’ he returned immediately, pitching the smoked butt out of the window and pulling the pack of Weights out of his pocket again.
‘Is she a horrible woman, like your dad said?’ Grace burst out, suddenly fired with an urgent need to know how hurt he’d been. She felt furious with Pamela Riley for rejecting him and was tempted to go to Bexleyheath herself and give his mother a piece of her mind.
‘No … she was nice … nothing like what I was expecting from me dad’s description of her,’ Chris admitted with a faraway look. ‘When I got there she was in a neighbour’s front garden, down on her hands and knees, clearing the wet leaves off this old dear’s path so she didn’t slip over.’ He paused, tapping the packet of Weights on the steering wheel. ‘So … if she was a lazy, good-fer-nuthin’ slut at some time, she ain’t any more. She’d been watching me sitting in the van, while I was plucking up the courage to get out and knock on her door. She thought I was the builder she’d rung up about fixing her a new gate.’ He gazed through the windscreen into the darkness. ‘Once I’d gone up her path she came over, smiling and chatting. I liked her straight away. I think she liked me too … till I told her who I was.’ He tipped his head back and chuckled bitterly at the memory of it. ‘Nearly got meself arrested over it.’ He glanced at Grace’s solemn face. ‘As soon as she realised why I’d come, she collapsed. One of her neighbours saw her on the ground and rushed out threatening to get the police on me. Must’ve thought I’d whacked her.’
‘What happened?’ Grace gasped through her fingers. Her heart was pounding beneath her ribs at the idea that she might have caused him to be in such serious trouble. ‘Did your mum say you’d assaulted her?’
‘No … she told her neighbour she’d tripped over, but I can’t deny it was my fault that she ended up on the deck. I thought for a minute she was seriously ill. She wouldn’t let me help her up, though; she just got on her feet and went inside, and that was that.’
Grace gave an audible sigh of relief, instinctively reaching out a hand to comfort him. He watched her fingers hover before just brushing his sleeve and withdrawing.
‘It’s alright, you don’t need to worry I’m feeling vindictive. I’ve said I don’t blame you. I’m not even going to say I told you so …’ He held out his hand, inviting her to touch him again.
His reassurance seemed hollow, spoken in such a stinging tone and, for the first time, a little frisson of fear tightened Grace’s gut. Even when he’d had her pinned against the wall in an alley, she’d trusted him not to harm her. But this wasn’t about a tiff, and a girl telling a boy she wanted a break from seeing him; it was about a lifetime of wishing and dreaming crumbling in an instant, and she knew if she were in his shoes she’d be inconsolable.
‘Why didn’t you come and tell me straight away you’d gone there?’ she asked huskily.
‘Weren’t up to it,’ he admitted brusquely. ‘It knocked me for six for a while. Dunno why, ’cos I was sure I’d cope alright with being told to get lost.’ He turned his head, protecting a glitter in his eyes. ‘Me dad knows something’s up with me … reckon he thinks it’s what’s gone on between us, so I’ve let him believe what he likes.’
He’d been licking his wounds for a whole week, Grace realised, before feeling composed enough to come and tell her that, against his better judgement, he’d done what she’d said, and had his courage rewarded in the way he’d said.
She knew there was nothing she could say to ease his pain, but there was something she could do, and she wasn’t sure whether that was what he was expecting and was the reason he’d brought her here: so she could make up for hurting him, his way. Worse, she was wondering if it was the least she owed him …
/> Although she’d honestly wanted things to turn out well between Chris and his mother there had been a selfish reason too that she’d been unwilling to examine till now.
Naively, she’d believed that once a reunion had taken place, Chris wouldn’t be so obsessed with Pamela. Grace had had her fill, when engaged to Hugh Wilkins, of competing with an older woman for her boyfriend’s attention. But instead of removing a rival, and helping Chris to feel more relaxed about his relationship with his mother, all she’d done was given him more reason to brood about her.
‘I’m sorry …’ she whispered, unable to express her guilt and remorse more fully.
‘Me too …’ He withdrew his hand. ‘So where does that leave us?’
Grace swallowed. ‘I don’t know …’ she croaked. ‘Perhaps if you try again in a week or two to see her, she might then understand …’
‘Fuck’s sake … !’
The curse exploded beneath his breath but she’d heard it and the violence in his voice made her flinch and swivel away from him.
‘I’ll come with you, if you want. You don’t have to go there alone next time. I promised I would go with you, and it’s the least I can do.’
‘I’m not going there again, with or without you.’ It was a quiet, calm statement.
‘Was her husband at home … or any children?’
‘Don’t know … never saw anybody else … they might’ve been out, I suppose.’
‘I should be getting back …’ Grace murmured.
He lit another cigarette, settled back against the seat. ‘Have you missed me?’
‘Yes …’
He turned towards her. ‘Good, ’cos I’ve missed you.’ He stretched out a hand and stroked the side of her face, trailed his fingers to caress softly beneath the hair at her nape until her eyelids drooped. ‘Goodnight kiss?’ he asked in a throaty murmur that mingled a challenge with wry pessimism.
She gazed at him with such wariness that he started laughing. A moment later he was leaning forward to turn the ignition. ‘I might be pissed off, and sex-starved, Grace, but I haven’t turned into a rapist.’
As he flicked the half-smoked cigarette out of the window, and reached for the handbrake, Grace spontaneously slid close to him, hugging him tightly about the waist and burrowing her face in his chest. ‘I know … I know you wouldn’t … it’s just I can see how sad you are and I don’t know what to do to make it right …’ Her muffled words petered out. She knew she’d said the wrong thing. But he didn’t laugh, or make any lewd suggestions. He put an arm about her, then the other, so she was squeezed hard against him and his warm breath stirred her hair.
‘It was brave of you to go there,’ Grace said after a few quiet minutes, when their hungry embrace had loosened a bit and the atmosphere between them was peaceful. ‘If your mum can’t be brave too, and meet you halfway, it’s her loss. Perhaps, once she’s got over the shock of seeing you for the first time …’ cos it is for the first time, really.’ She ran a hand up and down on his sleeve, searching for the right words. ‘Last time she saw you, you were just a babe in arms, weren’t you? Now you’re a man, and perhaps you don’t look anything like she imagined you would. But she might feel differently when she’s had a chance to calm down.’
‘You think so?’ He sounded cynical, yet also strangely open to persuasion.
Grace nodded vigorously and edged away from him so she could gaze earnestly into his eyes. ‘She must be a kind soul if she helps out her elderly neighbours.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘People who are kind sometimes never get thanks, or favours done back. My nan’s a bit like that,’ Grace said. ‘She’s sprightly for her age, and does a bit of shopping for a couple of her neighbours who hobble about, yet the old miseries moan if she’s gone in the wrong shop and spent a penny too much on their butter.’
‘You coming out with me at the weekend?’
Grace nodded and smiled. ‘It’ll have to be Sunday though ’cos I promised my nan I’d go to Wood Green shopping with her on Saturday, then back to hers for tea.’ She suddenly sat up. ‘Would you like to come to my nan’s for tea?’ She read his dubious expression. ‘Oh, you needn’t worry about my mum, she won’t be there, thank goodness. One of her friends is a hairdresser and she’s going to give Mum’s hair a permanent wave.’
‘Right, in that case, I’d like to meet your nan,’ Chris said. ‘’S’long as she don’t mind sharing her Victoria sponge with me.’
‘How d’you know we have Victoria sponge?’
‘Everybody has Victoria sponge according to me dad, now he’s an expert on teatime favourites. Oh, by the way, he’s opening a caff.’ He chuckled on seeing Grace’s comically sceptical expression. ‘It’s true … you can ask him …’ With that he caught her to him for a kiss of tender passion before steering away from the kerb.
‘I once met your grandfather, you know.’
Chris put down his teacup and gazed at the small, elderly lady seated across the table from him. ‘You knew the Plummers?’ he asked hoarsely, darting a look at Grace.
They were seated at Nan Jackson’s square dining table with an ample tea of sandwiches and dainty cakes spread out before them on a crisp linen cloth.
‘No, not your Plummer grandfather,’ Nan Jackson clarified with a smile. ‘I have to say I never knew them at all. But I once got introduced to Jimmy Wild in a pub. Me and your granddad Bert.’ Nan Jackson looked at Grace who was interestedly listening to this anecdote. ‘Well, we’d gone to Islington to see some people, you see. Bert had a job in a factory before he went off to fight in the Great War and he used to work with a fellow by the name of Lenny … can’t remember his surname …’ Nan Jackson’s lined face puckered further and she gave an impatient little tap on the table. ‘Ooh, what was it? Anyway, Lenny and his girlfriend were having a bit of a party in a pub in Holloway Road ’cos they’d got engaged. Nag’s Head, it was,’ she blurted with a pleased smile on remembering the pub’s name. ‘Lenny was quite pally with Jimmy Wild ’cos he and his girlfriend lived close to The Bunk. I expect you knew your grandparents used to live in Campbell Road, didn’t you, Christopher?’
‘I did,’ Chris confirmed. He was eager to hear more about his notorious grandfather, and have an outsider’s opinion on him. Everybody in the family had seemed to loathe Jimmy Wild because of his wicked ways. ‘I know he was unpopular. What did you think of him?’
‘Well, he was a handsome devil, I’ll give him that,’ Nan Jackson said with a chuckle. ‘I assumed he was with his wife, your grandma, that night but apparently the pretty blonde woman with him was his fancy piece. Everybody in the Nag’s Head was going on about how brazen they were, carrying on like that.’
‘I’ve heard some tales about him.’ Chris gave Grace’s grandmother a rueful smile. ‘I feel sorry for me poor old Nan Fran and what she must’ve had to put up with.’
‘He tried to murder Matilda in the 1920s, you know,’ Grace piped up, eyes widening. ‘You told me about it, didn’t you, Chris.’
‘I’d heard a rumour about that … dreadful thing to do, wasn’t it?’ Nan Jackson said but her lips twitched in scandalised humour. ‘I’ve heard about Matilda Keiver too and I reckon it’d take a better man than Jimmy Wild to see her off.’
Chris nodded, his expression making words unnecessary. He helped himself to a piece of sponge oozing butter cream.
‘ ’Course Jimmy was young when I met him. You could tell just from looking at him that he was a rogue alright: all swagger and brash as they come. He’d flirt with any woman who was walking past him. I remember his fancy piece … Nellie was her name … giving him such a look for trying to chat up the barmaid right in front of her eyes.’ Nan Jackson stretched out a withered hand and pushed the plate of cakes towards Chris. ‘Now come on, take another one, I’ve not baked this lot to see them go to waste. Eat up, both of you.’
‘Mum thinks the Wilds are a rough lot, but I reckon you needed to be to survive in a place like Th
e Bunk.’ Grace gave Chris a smile. She was pleased he didn’t seem embarrassed at all by this conversation about his evil grandfather, and that he and her nan had seemed to take to one another straight away.
‘Good and bad in all families,’ Nan Jackson said succinctly. ‘And I speak as I find. I can tell from meeting you, Christopher, that you’re a good ’un.’ She gave her granddaughter a wink and poured herself a fresh cup of tea.
‘Well, on a lighter note we’re after some chairs to borrow for the Coronation Day party we’re having in The Bunk.’ Grace chose a cake and put it on her plate. ‘Chris’s dad is opening a caff so we’ll be able to borrow some from him because, of course, he’ll be shutting up shop on the big day. But we still don’t reckon we’ll have enough, do we?’ She glanced at Chris for a nod of agreement. ‘Do you know if your community centre up the road might have some going spare in June next year?’
‘I could ask the committee, if you like,’ Nan Jackson said. ‘You don’t want to take ’em just yet, do you?’
‘Oh no, nowhere to store them, but we’re trying to get everything organised so it all goes off with a bang.’ She turned to Chris. ‘We want it to be a great do, don’t we. Matilda has already got a few cases of drink stashed away in her room, and a whole list of people she wants to track down and invite.’
‘Surprised she ain’t drunk the Irish whiskey,’ Chris chipped in drolly. ‘I’ve heard a few tales about her ’n’ all and how she liked a tipple or two in her time.’
‘Living in The Bunk, I reckon she probably needed it,’ Nan Jackson said, rolling her eyes.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
‘I’ve seen you before. You were here a while ago, weren’t you?’
‘Yeah … is Mrs Riley about, d’you know? I’ve come to do her job.’
Chris already knew she wasn’t: for a week he’d secretly investigated his mother’s routine to find out if there were days and times when she was regularly away from home. To do so he’d had to take time off work, and he knew his three workmates were getting narked that he kept disappearing. But he didn’t care. He wasn’t even bothered that they’d fallen behind schedule again in Whadcoat Street, and he had nobody to blame for it but himself. He’d had set in his mind for a long time what he wanted to do, and today he was fired up to go ahead and do it.
