Meet Me at the Pier Head

by Ruth Hamilton

  ‘Where are we?’ Tia asked.

  ‘Belle Vale,’ he replied.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My alter ego Tom Quirke owns property here. He’s richer than I am, and he lets some out to families, some to students at the university, some to medical staff from the hospitals. Money standing still is worthless, so it’s invested and doing some good.’

  Tia scanned the street’s substantial Victorian terraced houses. ‘Why are we here? Are you throwing me out?’

  ‘No,’ he said emphatically. ‘The students have dispersed for summer vacation. Two houses are empty. There will be no audience here. Before we go any further, before we move south in more ways than one, I’m going to introduce you gradually to me, the me I tried and failed to leave behind.’

  She swallowed. Her heart was suddenly in fifth gear, and breathing was becoming a luxury. She felt the colour creeping across her cheekbones. Even as a teenager, she had seldom blushed. It’s Roedean’s fault, Tia. When it comes to love, you get to analyse Sense and Sensibility and write a report about the radical differences and similarities between Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, both of whom were hysterical females. Why are you trembling? It’s not as if you’re about to lose your virginity, for goodness’ sake.

  ‘Shall we go inside?’ Theo asked.

  Her mouth lacked moisture. With a tongue as dry as unused blotting paper and a throat that seemed to have narrowed, she felt unable to give birth to language. She was going to meet a child disguised as a man, the man she loved.

  ‘Portia?’

  She didn’t even mind when he used her full name, because he had a way of coating it in honey. Stop this now, Bellamy. This is the first time, because you’ve never teetered on the brink of love until now. Are you sorry that you didn’t save yourself for him? He’s no virgin, either – remember that.

  ‘Portia?’ he repeated.

  ‘What?’ At last, she managed to force a syllable from the depths of her lungs.

  ‘Are you nervous?’

  She nodded just once.

  ‘So am I. This falling in love is bloody hard work. I haven’t written a word since . . . for a while.’ That wasn’t true; he’d worked on no body parts, but he’d started to write an account of his own life, and it was draining. Seeing it pouring out of his typewriter, page after page of his own absolute truth, made the whole mess revive itself to the point where nightmares were a distinct possibility. Yet it was cathartic in a sense, as if the process were a cleansing agent. She was sitting as still as a lovely statue. ‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Are you afraid of me, Portia Bellamy?’

  ‘I’m afraid of me,’ she admitted, honesty etched into the statement. ‘I’m no innocent, but I haven’t felt like this before.’ Keep talking, Tia. Don’t sit here like a block of that Wall’s ice cream, solid, rectangular and slow to melt. Where’s your confidence gone? Back to Kent to hide in a priest hole? You’ve always been in charge, even where Pa’s concerned. Keep calm. Stick with the truth. ‘I feel odd,’ she admitted. ‘Fascinated by you, needing to know everything about you, leaping off the edge, but afraid – do you understand that?’

  ‘Absolutely, because there’s no parachute, no safety net. We seem to be suffering from the same disorder. It must be communicable, either infectious or contagious. Don’t worry, I can assure you that I haven’t brought you here to have my wicked way with your delightful self. To be truthful, I wouldn’t eat in a place that’s been occupied by students, let alone . . . anything else. Just privacy, a place to talk – it’s what we need.’

  ‘OK.’

  They left the car and walked up the short path to the house. He opened the door and breathed in sharply. ‘There’s the student eau de toilette,’ he told her. ‘Heinz beans and testosterone – a heady combination.’

  Tia laughed. ‘You should put that in one of your books.’

  ‘Don’t worry, I will.’

  ‘How many live in here?’ she asked.

  ‘Four pay rent, but the rest are nomadic. I don’t mind, because I remember my own time at university. I was older than most, and I had part-time jobs, although I know how poor the youngsters were. Someone has to house them.’

  ‘You’re a kind man, then.’

  ‘Maybe. I think of myself as pragmatic – the houses gain value.’

  They entered a large living room which was rather frayed at the edges, but spectacularly clean. ‘I thought it would be a mess,’ Tia said. ‘It seems quite tidy, too tidy for students.’

  ‘It was in a bad way, but a Mrs Venables comes in during vacations to fight the good fight. She’ll have shifted decayed food and filthy clothing, and she keeps rodent life at bay, though even she can’t eliminate the under-smell of confined young manhood.’

  They sat on a cleanish sofa, and his arm crept across her shoulders.

  ‘We’re supposed to talk,’ Tia said, a huge smile fastening itself across her face. At last, she was relaxing.

  He repaid her with a grin. ‘We’ve done everything apart from the deed, so don’t be coy. About Saturday – the ambulance is garaged and ready. Tom and Nancy are close enough to walk to it, and I’ll pick up their luggage this week. Officially, they’ve bought raffle tickets and won a couple of weeks in Blackpool. You take Rosie on Saturday morning, and I’ll take Maggie. We’ll get the ambulance out, and put our cars in the garage.’

  A few beats of time strolled by before Tia spoke again. ‘So we are definitely kidnapping a child and putting our jobs in jeopardy?’

  ‘Would you rather leave Rosie’s life on the line?’

  ‘No,’ she answered with vehemence.

  He kissed her gently on her forehead. ‘Think about Maggie. Her daughter is ill in hospital, and no matter what Maggie might say, she loves Sadie. But she knows that Rosie is more important, so she’s taking her away to Kent. The poor woman is in danger of making her own condition worse, yet she will risk her health for the sake of that child’s safety. I like Maggie.’

  ‘I’m growing fond of her, too.’

  ‘She’s prepared to abandon her sick daughter for Rosie’s sake. What are a couple of teaching posts compared to that?’

  Tia nodded. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘I’m always right.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘So am I. What an interesting relationship this is promising to be.’

  ‘Just don’t challenge me at school.’

  Tia giggled. ‘Not even behind the bike sheds or the air raid shelter?’

  ‘Especially not in those places.’

  ‘OK.’ She rested her head on his shoulder and breathed him in. This was her safe place; this was where she wanted to be.

  In a quiet voice, Theo told her some of his past, the easier bits. He described stepchildhood as vicious, as a cavern deep and bottomless and lonely. The isolated hole, cold and damp, was created by the interloper, the invader who separated a child from his own blood, from his dad, gradually removing all evidence of her predecessor and fighting a ghost while trying to create her own family from her own belly. ‘It’s a meeting of precariously united nations in miniature, feelings buried behind stony masks until a fault near the surface erupts and battle commences, and some fool – usually me – puts his hand on the button that makes a new Hiroshima. I was twelve, confused, and I missed my mother and wanted my father back,’ he said quietly.

  Tia had to remind herself to breathe.

  He told her that he’d felt excluded when half-siblings arrived. He described a teenage where corners had been cut from his life; he opened up about feeling like a satellite whose orbit was denied any warmth from a sun, recounted the many occasions on which he’d run from the diapers, the screaming kid in the pram, the crawling, alien infants, the ‘wrong’ smell of a house that was hers. ‘Then one day when I was almost fifteen, Timmy made a break for it. He was just about two years old, unsteady on his feet, no wisdom, no street sense. Dad was at work. He hated city life, but my new supposed-to-be-mother was a city girl and she called the shots, so we we
re suddenly New Yorkers.

  ‘I saw the truck bearing down on the child, and in that moment he became mine, my little brother. I ran like the wind, knocked Timmy to the sidewalk and took the blow from the slow-moving vehicle, whose driver had braked. No bones broken, just my shoulder out of joint. She screamed blue murder at Timmy, the way a mother does when her offspring terrifies her. She then put a grateful arm round me and held me like one of her own. “Come home with me,” she said. “You’re our big, brave boy, and your mom must be real proud of you, wherever she is right now.” After apologizing to the ashen-faced driver, she took me and Timmy back to the house, pulled my arm back into its socket and gave me coffee with a shot of brandy in it. A nurse, she is, and she still works in a hospital. She loved me, Portia, though she didn’t know how to say it, and she loves me to this day.’

  ‘How could she not? Tia asked.

  He shrugged. ‘I was traumatized and difficult. Hearing the screams of my mother burning to death left me angry at the world, at God, at myself. Then my dad shut down like a safe whose combination was lost. He was silent until he got drunk, at which point he became loud and stupid. Till he met her. And as I grew older, I saw the love between them and allowed myself to be drawn in. I had to want to be loved, you see.’

  ‘Yes, I do see.’

  ‘And she made me go to school. High school was easy, and I made friends. Without my stepmom, God alone knows what I might have become.’

  ‘You had a tough life, Teddy.’

  He stroked her silky hair. ‘There is no light without dark. I’ve had a rich life, Portia, colourful like a rainbow, each hue spilling into the next. The only difference was that my indigo darkened to black for a while.’ He turned and smiled at her. ‘And if you are my prize, then I am well compensated.’ He kissed her long and hard on the lips. ‘Will you be my prize?’

  ‘Probably. As long as you’ll be my prize.’

  He laughed. ‘You have to read the rest of it first.’

  ‘That’s fine. I learned to read a few months ago. But just in case, make sure there are no big words in it.’

  ‘OK.’

  They sat for a while, touching, kissing until breathless, both wanting, both needing, both knowing that Theo, like the man in the truck, must apply the brakes. Tia owned no stopping mechanism. She could control a class of children, but herself? She indulged and spoiled herself. She was a naughty child; no gold stars for Tia Bellamy.

  When they reached home, Theo kissed his darling good night before locking himself in the body parts room. He began to write, his head bent over the typewriter, fingers flying until keys locked in a tangle on the page.

  Although I was young, my bones seemed older, colder, gone to mould, even becoming weak. I could not bear the smell or the sound of fire, hated to be touched or spoken to. Memories depended from my framework, the still vulnerable flesh drooping raw from sinew and cartilage, since I virtually stopped eating. I was a bag of skin, bone and hurt. Somewhere within the shell I had become, a parasite embedded itself and sucked me dry from within. Its name was, I think, hatred, and its close companions were fury, sadness and despair.

  Surrounded by life with all its colour and sound, I remained alone, locked in, isolated, yet still searching for a true solitude into which I might scream louder than the noise of flame and crackling wood and swollen metal as it pops and buckles in the path of white-hot flames . . .

  He stood, rubbed his eyes and went to bed. He was making so many mistakes, which could be corrected on the top copy, but the carbon, supposed to be for Isadora, was beginning to look like Swahili . . . Why Isadora? Because she, like her wonderful daughter, owned a heart big enough to hold his truth and keep it safe in this land that was no longer foreign.

  Tia crept up the stairs, anxious about waking two women who had travelled all the way from Kent to Liverpool before enduring a supper party with strangers.

  She opened the door at the top of the flight, surprised to find Isadora waiting for her. ‘Shouldn’t a woman of your advanced years be in bed, Ma?’ She kissed the top of her mother’s head.

  ‘You were out with Theo?’

  ‘Yes. We went to look at some of his other properties in the city.’

  ‘Ah.’ Isadora glanced down at newly painted fingernails. ‘There’s something going on, then?’

  Tia shrugged. ‘I think I love him. And he thinks he loves me.’

  Isadora nodded. ‘I see. That was quick.’

  ‘Being quick doesn’t have to mean mistaken or wrong.’

  The older woman pursed her lips. ‘Dip your toes before taking the dive, sweetheart. For some men, it’s a takeover bid, a dabble in mergers and acquisitions. He’s older than you, about halfway between my age and yours.’

  Tia grinned. ‘You’re definitely not having him. I saw him first.’

  Isadora giggled. ‘I like him, Portia. I like him very much. There’s intelligence, talent and humour in the man, and he clearly thinks that you are his main source of light. I’m sure you will take care to disabuse him of that mistaken concept.’

  Tia could not contain herself. ‘This is a secret, Ma, though he finally gave me permission to tell you. Theodore Quinn retained his initials and became Tom Quirke, and he wrote the Body Parts series of books. The writing allows him to indulge his hobby, which is teaching.’

  Isadora blinked several times. ‘Goodness gracious, and his dialogue’s excellent.’

  ‘Yes, it is. Are you thinking what I’ve been thinking for days? Theatre, film, radio, television in the long term?’

  ‘From an acorn, the heart of England grew. That was a line in . . . oh, I forget, but it was in a play long ago, when I was a mere sapling.’ She stared at her daughter, as if assessing her. ‘I can get something done with those little acorn books of his, Portia. The man is clever; he has forced me to laugh until I was too sore to read on, yet there’s solidity in his characters. What a find, my love.’

  Tia grinned. ‘He’s a treasure.’

  ‘You may be right there.’

  ‘Not a word, Ma. He’ll talk about it openly in his own good time.’ Tia sat next to her mother. It was all going to happen tomorrow; Pa would receive his divorce papers if he could be found, while the national newspapers would be full of it.

  But Isadora’s mind was on other things. Roughly half of Quirke’s books were set here, in Liverpool. The mistaken of the southern counties probably believed that the only culture to be found in the north would be in neglected refrigerators or in mould on bedroom walls. How wrong they were. Having met Maggie, Rosie, Martha and her injured brother, Isadora had already experienced the wit and wisdom of this beautiful, vibrant city. She could do some good here; her money might multiply and yield sufficient to turn Bartle Hall into a refuge for children, and the north, too, would benefit. ‘I won’t say a word, Portia.’

  ‘Thanks, Ma.’

  They clung together for a while. ‘Did you love Pa?’ Tia asked eventually.

  ‘Yes, he dazzled me. I thought he was my way forward, a torch in the darkness. That’s the other thing, my precious girl. We change.’

  ‘Fortunately, some grow closer with age, Ma.’

  Isadora kissed her daughter’s cheek. ‘Just take care, Portia. Marriage can be a difficult journey, so make sure you tread softly, because you tread on dreams. Who wrote that, or something like it?’

  ‘I forget.’

  ‘Well, don’t forget to call me Izzy as from tomorrow. This evening’s guests will not betray me, but some penniless soul might be happy to take payment from the press. Guard me well, baby.’

  ‘Always, Izzy; I shall always guard you.’ In that moment, the daughter’s love for her mother was too big to be contained, and it spilled down her face like summer rain. ‘Always,’ she repeated, her voice strangled by tears. ‘My mama, my best friend in the whole world.’

  ‘Don’t weep,’ Isadora whispered. ‘Marry him. You’ve changed because of him, child. Yes, you should marry him. Stop crying now.’

/>   Tia smiled. ‘These aren’t tears, Ma. They’re just overflow.’

  ENGLISH ACTOR IN DIVORCE SCANDAL

  ACTING DYNASTIES AT WAR

  RICHARD BELLAMY TO BE SUED BY ISADORA

  NO FUTURE FOR THE MARRIAGE, SAYS ISADORA’S AGENT

  They will never again work together, the same source insists.

  Theo picked up the newspapers at seven o’clock before returning to his ground-floor apartment to prepare for school. He climbed the stairs to the first floor and placed the four copies on a table in the upper hallway. A young Isadora stared up at him from a front page; Tia was the image of her mother, though taller. ‘I get better value for money if this works out,’ he whispered. ‘More pounds for my pound.’

  The door opened. ‘Good morning, Teddy Bear.’

  He smiled. Her hair was sleep-disturbed, her eyes hooded against the invasion of light, the nightdress crumpled. She seemed not to be a morning person. ‘Don’t dare to call me Teddy Bear at school.’

  ‘Mr Quinn,’ she amended.

  ‘That’s better.’ He handed her the papers. ‘It’s happening. I’m worried about your younger sister. Few will know where Delia is, because she’s an itinerant anyway, and she’s supposedly on her way here with your mother’s things. But Juliet is a fixed point in that hospital. She’ll be easy to trace. I’m also wondering whether we should go to Chaddington Green after all. There’ll be reporters and photographers looking for Bellamys.’

  ‘We’ll talk about this later. Remember, my father will be prey for the media, too, and every reporter in the country knows that Bartle Hall is Pa’s home, so he’ll probably be elsewhere. I’ll sort out something with our housekeeper, Mrs Melia. I promised Rosie a priest hole, and a priest hole she shall have.’

  ‘I’m concerned for Juliet, Tia.’

  She nodded her agreement. ‘Delia’s tough, as am I; she’ll tell them to go away and urinate, but Juliet . . . You’re right. I’ll telephone Matron. Incidentally, my own phone will be installed some time today, but I must beg to use yours this morning.’