Ellie pauses in mid-swallow and her heart starts pumping fast. She reaches for a drink before she remembers how much she dislikes it and her hand stays hopelessly wrapped round the glass, making hot fingerprints on the sides. Oh, dear Jesus, she’d thought he was enjoying it! She’d been certain he was coping—everything he came home and told her sounded good. The redwood shutters were selling like hot cakes, since they were cheaper and healthier than double glazing which nobody can afford any more, and Murphy and Ramon have been pressured into taking extra warehouse space. Some of the shutters have been sent straight to America. The last thing she heard was that they were considering borrowing big money in order to try and start producing them here with the help of a government grant. Is this what this meal is all about? Is it a sop, a comforter? But how can he think about going back, and what on earth has he got to go back to?
Malc says, slowly and clearly, ‘Elle, they are going to make me a partner.’
Robert never told her! All the breath leaves Ellie’s body at the same time.
‘Well,’ is what she hears herself say while she dabs her brimming eyes. ‘Well, whoever would have guessed it? And you’ve only been there for four months!’ And since the day you first started, she thinks, as the tears flow, I feel I have not been able to reach you.
‘We mustn’t raise our hopes too much because we’re still at the stage when anything could happen, but if we sign this new contract next week we’ll be in business for the next five years and that’s definite. It’s going to mean a hell of a lot more money coming in. We can think about getting a house, you’ll be able to stop work…’
Oh thank God thank God.
Ellie stops listening and watches Malc’s face instead. She can remember Malc like this. This isn’t new, although in some ways, given all the years that have passed, it is a revelation. Her heart takes her back, oh, more than twenty years; she can smell the warm scent of bracken, she can feel the moss on the backs of her legs. And Malc’s voice, much the same, with that note of defiance in it as he strokes her arm with a blade of grass. ‘This is my dream, Elle. We won’t fall into the poverty trap that happens to everyone else. We won’t have kids till we’re ready. We’ll take it slowly, we’ll both keep on working. One day we’ll get a house, maybe somewhere round here and I’ll commute to work…’
And she’d thought of her mother’s face, how her mouth went all tight when she spoke his name. ‘Malcolm Freeman! Talk about a ne’er do well, talk about a loser! You’ve picked a right one there, my girl, and that’s no mistake! Open your eyes, Ellie, do! All those lads are taking after their father. Warren’s already shut up for five years and Mickey’s heading in the self-same direction. It’s in their blood, Ellie, it’s in their gin-soaked, shifty blood, you’ve only got to look at them to know, and the girls are no better. Karen’s on the game and Linda’s down that escort agency nights…’
‘Malcolm is different, Mam.’
That didn’t work.
‘If you marry that lad then I’m washing my hands of you and I can tell you that now for nothing. You’ve made mess enough of your own life, fouling up all the chances God gave you. You always had a brain, Ellie, and once I expected, not great things perhaps, but I never imagined you’d end up in a shop no better than that Margery Ducker! Chucked out of school before the term’s over, I ask you, honest to God. And what d’you think you’re going to live on?’
‘Malc’s earning, Mam.’
‘Huh! What?’
‘He’s going to night-school. He’s doing business studies. He wants to get out as much as I do.’
‘For God’s sake, Ellie, shut your mouth for once and open your eyes instead.’
She’d been wearing a pale blue cotton dress with white spots on, and she’d felt like the sky with a waspy belt on. As the sea wind blew over Caldy Hill, they rested their love-lorn, aching eyes on the grey Atlantic. Their picnic was ham sandwiches with mustard and crumbly fruit cake, everything smelling ever so slightly of petrol because the bike was playing up. It was all so vast, then. The possibilities and the hopes were all so vast, then.
‘I haven’t got my johnnies with me, Elle. I didn’t think I’d need them.’
‘Take a chance, Malc. Take it out, it’s a safe time of the month.’
‘We can’t risk it. I don’t want to do that to you, you’re so precious to me.’ And Malc had almost been crying.
She’d pulled at the St Christopher he’d worn round his neck, the back of his white shirt billowed. Oh God and they’d both been frantic.
And afterwards they’d walked down by the shore, passing all the big houses on the edge of the golf-links. Malc skimmed a stone out across the water. ‘One day, Elle, I swear to you, one day…’
When they got home in the evening Lily Freeman was lying down in the street outside number nine with a small crowd of disapproval gathered round her.
‘They’ve taken Arthur away again,’ sniffed Freda when Ellie got back indoors, swilling the brown teapot with self-righteous energy. ‘It’s a pity they don’t shut him up for good, him and the rest of that filthy lot.’
The Hung Toa waiter hovers intrusively and Ellie wonders if they are doing something oddly. ‘We’ve waited long enough for this moment, haven’t we?’ she asks Malc now.
‘That’s why I’m so determined to make it happen.’
‘Perhaps we had to go through what we have, maybe that had to happen. I sometimes think that before all this we had lost ourselves. I used to sit and look at you and feel like a total stranger. D’you know what I mean, Malc? And did you sometimes feel that way, too?’
‘This could all have happened much earlier. We would have made it if we hadn’t gone and crippled ourselves…’
‘But that’s all done with now.’
‘Is it, Elle?’
‘Of course it is. There are just the two of us now. Nobody else to think about but you and me, nothing to hold us back any more.’
Ellie is almost breathless because the conversation has taken this unexpected, intimate turn. She feels like a young girl again, almost embarrassed by it, likely to blush. Malc has escaped and she’s frightened about what he might say. She has trapped a spider against the sofa and she doesn’t know which way it’s going to run.
‘But we’ve both changed.’ He sounds perplexed.
‘Of course we have changed. We are twenty years older and we’ve been through the mill together. Think of all those ups and downs, but we’ve triumphed, Malc, and now we’re coming out the other side.’
‘You make it sound simple. Easy.’
‘I know it’s not easy. I know that you’re working very hard and I can imagine the kind of strain you must be under.’
‘But I’m not under a strain. The strain seems to have gone.’
Yes, it’s just Ellie who’s under a strain, watching for him and worrying.
‘I worry,’ she says. ‘I still worry.’
‘With the children gone perhaps you haven’t got enough to fill your head. Still doing that same old job every day, still pandering to that bloody daft Gogh woman. Maybe you should look for something else now, Elle, in case this all goes wrong. Maybe you should grab the chance and find something to throw yourself into.’ She is shaken by his gentle manner. And it’s not just his voice, his face is gentle, too. It’s a long time since she’s seen that expression.
‘I don’t need to do that, Malc. You have always been my life, you and the kids, you know that.’
‘You were always full of the things you’d like to do. You were for ever going on about how you’d like to join the drama club and the choral society, but that you had too much to do and were too tired and anyway we didn’t have the cash. Well, now, with things taking a turn for the better you’ve got the chance. Why not take it?’
Because I don’t want to be on my own, I want us to do things together.
‘I was thinking it might be nice if we could find an interest we could share.’
‘It’s not like tha
t for me, Elle. I haven’t got any spare time at the moment, I never know what I’m going to be doing of an evening—and I don’t want you to be always waiting for me to get home.’
Oh?
‘Well, if we move, if we buy a house, that is something we’d be sharing. The house and the garden and the furnishing of it.’
‘I don’t think a new house is ever going to mean so much to me as it will to you.’
‘I can remember a time when buying a house was important to you, Malc, one of the most important things in your life.’
‘For the family, yes, for the children, but that part of our life is all over now.’
‘That part’s over, but there’s a hell of a lot left. We’ve got years still, Malc, and we want a nice place that we can enjoy together!’ Why is she having to remind him of this? And what Malc used to say about Chinese food is quite right, Ellie doesn’t like it. She’d rather have popped into Tesco on the way home and bought a nice piece of steak. She would have made a tasty, thick onion gravy.
‘I am not saying we don’t, I’m just trying to say that I don’t think it can ever be something I’ll want to take a big part in.’
‘You really love this job, don’t you, Malc?’ Funny, she’s never quite realised this before, and it’s something she hadn’t anticipated, either. Didn’t she want him to enjoy his job then, the job she’s given him, the job she’s paying for? She stares at his hands and is shocked to see how clean they are, and how his nails have grown; they are not chipped at the ends and grimy any more. He has nice hands.
He looks even better in this grey suit than he’d looked in that first brown one. Malc is not frightened by any of this! How very extraordinary. Malc is not frightened at all!
And now he is telling her, ‘Next Thursday and Friday we have to go to London to talk to a firm of importers. Murphy and Ramon are keen for you to come, but I said I didn’t know how you’d feel about that. I told them you’d never liked London.’
‘What about you, do you want me to come?’ Ellie attempts to keep her voice casual.
‘I don’t mind either way, but you might find it a little bit daunting and boring, all this Canonwaits talk. It’s going to be fairly intensive. Still it’s up to you, Ellie. I told them I’d ask you.’
‘What sort of people are they? Where will we stay, and what do you think they’ll want me to wear? What would I say—I don’t know them!’
‘That’s okay, I’ll tell them no.’
‘Don’t do that! I do want to come but…’
‘Not if it’s all going to be a great fuss.’
‘No! No, it won’t be a fuss. I’ll have to buy something new and see if I can get in for a perm. I can get the shopping done if we get back in time on the Saturday, but don’t worry, they’ll fit me in if I say it’s urgent… and London’ll be nice in the spring with all the blossom out…’
Dare she go to the bank and withdraw some money in order to buy something really smart, or should she wait till she gets to London? But Malc is not listening. He has turned away, and Ellie is left chatting to a rather bored, Albert Finney profile.
When they finally get up to leave she discovers the hem of her skirt has come down and she’s trailing white thread behind her.
13
SHE CANNOT COMPLAIN THAT circumstances are drifting along without change. Changes are taking place frighteningly quickly; sometimes Ellie feels they are happening so fast she can’t grasp them.
Malc has given up smoking. He has thrown away his tin, leaving Ellie anxiously dragging away at her forty Silk Cut. And the worst thing about that is that it was Malc who gave Ellie that starter puff in the first place.
Now Ellie has her million she doesn’t feel quite so guilty about squandering money on ciggies.
And another thing. It was on the train journey going to London that she glanced down at his feet and realised that Malc was not the sort of man you could give reindeer socks to any more. They all had breakfast on the train… she and Murphy, Ramon and Malc. It was incredible, biting your British rail sausage while you watched the world flash by. A pale blue sky arched the land, the rivers were silken ribbons, and the tiny cars and lorries that moved at a slower pace than the train seemed to flow through the stillness of an eternity.
She had to ask for sauce because they didn’t provide it, only mustard and she didn’t want that… not with breakfast. The dining car was a non-smoker. The whole of the journey took place in a non-smoker, and Ellie had to squeeze in the odd fag under cover of going to the toilet. Well, she didn’t want Ramon or Murphy to know she was that desperate. It was only when she went to sit down again that she realised they must have known why she’d gone, because she hadn’t clicked the lock which informed the whole carriage that the toilet was engaged. That’s if they were that interested… which she supposed they were probably not.
The three men had a lot to read and a lot to talk about. Ellie slid through Woman’s Own, and filled in a puzzle book she’d bought on the platform at Lime Street.
London—so much paler than Liverpool, quite wraithlike really, when you compare the two. Not so substantial, not so wise, not so wounded. Just like the people. They check in at the Curzon Hotel, climbing over coachloads of skiers in shiny red and white anoraks who pepper the hotel steps in order to reach the foyer. And when they get to their room she discovers that it is a non-smoker, too, with a plaque on the door sponsored by the British Lung Foundation.
‘Take no bloody notice of that,’ says Malc, wrestling with the window which takes all his strength to shift it. ‘If you want to smoke, you smoke. This window has not been open since this hotel was built,’ he complains, sweating as he tries to budge it, and they are both breathless from the incredible heat which sears your throat and parches your mouth so you are forced into buying little drinks from the fridge under the dressing table.
No wonder people wander round with hardly anything on. You can’t wear nice woollies, thinks Ellie, if you live in London. You’d have to stick to blouses and cardigans which you could put on and take off easily.
In the afternoon, while the men have a meeting, Ellie goes shopping. She strolls around seeing things she would like but is unable to buy because of her self-imposed circumstances. London pavements are harder than Liverpool ones. She would like to have been with somebody else, especially when she stops for a cup of coffee and a sandwich. She is not used to passing time. She feels so uneasy sitting here on her own that she brings out her puzzle book and pretends to do some but she feels too lonely to concentrate. And she discovers that she is sitting at a no-smoking table.
This is silly, she thinks to herself, pushing aside her great need. Everything is working out exactly as I planned, so why do I feel so miserable? She sits and she waits for the coffee to seep through the holes in that ridiculous manner—it will be cold before she gets her mouth to it—and she thinks that her loneliness has something to do with keeping such a huge secret to herself. It forms a big part of her now, so it is something that, really, she ought to be sharing. But how can she?
She passes a hairdresser’s and is tempted—she’s not satisfied with what they have done at Shirley’s. She hadn’t come out with what she’d wanted… they hadn’t changed her enough, no, not at all. Ellie walks in, and backs straight out when she sees the prices.
Eventually she buys a newspaper and returns, defeated, to lie on her hotel bed. She turns on the telly, feeling a failure and wondering why.
Perhaps she shouldn’t have come.
That night they dine in splendour. Ellie wears a dress she’s bought in Lendels which cost her £250! Buying it, spending that amount on a dress had actually made her feel sick. She’d had to rest in the ladies powder room afterwards. Malc had given her £50—he might know about redwood shutters, revolving gazebos and men’s suits, but he doesn’t know much about women’s clothes. She had meant to stick to the fifty, but there’d been nothing in the cocktail department in Lendels anywhere near that amount.
She’d been very careful to throw away the receipt.
It is a simple dress in a black, filmy material with a V going down to her waist at the back and a high, rounded neck with black beads in it which form the shape of delicate petals. To her horror, it doesn’t look as if anyone else in the restaurant is wearing an expensive dress. And yet, in some peculiar way, they look as if they’ve spent more than she has. Ellie just can’t figure it out. Here they are, these London women, in skirts with white petticoats showing and fairly simple blouses and yet… is it her jewellery that lets her down, or her hair, or her make-up? Miserably she toys with her food, trying to see where it is in the gloom of the candle, trying to work things out. It’s not fair. And when Ramon, in a velvet jacket and bow-tie, says, quite sincerely, ‘Smashing! Say, man… we’re dining with the prettiest lady in town tonight,’ Ellie does not feel pleased at all. She just wishes he hadn’t said anything, partly because of the way she feels and partly because she’s noticed that Malc hasn’t commented.
It is so much easier for men, somehow. Well Malc looks fine, he looks as if he’s been born to the life in his suit and his bright white shirt and his dull gold cufflinks. Even his hair seems to fit, it is successful hair, and she sees that it has a lot to do with the way you carry yourself, how pleased with yourself you are. Well, Malc is obviously pleased with himself, and isn’t this exactly what she’s wanted?
Surely Malc’s success is Ellie’s achievement tonight?
They change the conversation from business to pleasure just because she is with them. She knows very well they’d have talked business if she had not been here and that they’d have preferred it; exciting things are happening, very exciting things.
They keep asking her questions politely and politely, she answers. Oh, it is all so stiff and formal, not at all like that first time at Nelson Street. But is this because she’s so nervous… in this alien environment, trying so hard to please? She realises this, and yet can do nothing about it.
She fixes the smile on her face. She sees the shiny end of her nose and tries to hide her rough red hands.
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