A Liverpool Song (2 page)

He walked to the window and stared out at Liverpool’s angry river. Dark grey and boiling, it leapt over fortifications built to hold it back. Years ago, houses had tumbled into the water,
so concrete steps designed to prevent a repeat performance ran from Blundellsands through Brighton-le-Sands right down to Waterloo and the marina. He might have considered buying a yacht, but
he’d once felt sick on a glassy-smooth boating lake, so he’d be better sticking to dry land.

‘I don’t like it,’ the housekeeper moaned. ‘Frightens the life out of me, it does.’

‘I know. But it keeps you quiet, and that’s fine with me.’

‘You’re cruel.’

‘Oh, pipe down and rest your varicose veins, woman.’

She stared at his back. Straight as a die, and well over six feet in height, he had never developed a stoop. Women stared at him. She’d noticed that whenever he’d helped her out with
shopping. Women in Sainsbury’s almost salivated when he walked by. Every female teller in the bank smiled hopefully so that he might choose to stop at her station. He had no idea. Perhaps
unawareness added to his charm, then. ‘What are you going to do with the rest of your life, Doc? Play with cars and build more furniture?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘Well, you’d better make your mind—’ An enormous clap of thunder cut her off. She dared not look through the window, because hearing the storm was bad enough without
looking at God’s fury making holes in the earth. The weather was an omen; this fellow should have carried on working for at least five further years.

‘Old man river isn’t pleased,’ he said. ‘The tide’s in, too. It might test our fortifications. Perhaps we should have got sandbags from somewhere to keep the water
out.’ That should make her forget to panic. Or at least change the focus of her fears.

Eva shot to her feet. ‘A flood?’ she screeched. ‘That’s all we need.’

He swung round and gave her his full attention. ‘That would ruin your parquet, wouldn’t it? Rumour has it that Blundellsands will be under water in a hundred years from now, so
what’s a century among friends?’

She glared at him. ‘You’re evil, you are.’

‘That’ll be why I’m cruel, then.’

He was neither evil nor cruel. Eva knew how generous he was, how kind. Many times she had arrived at work only to discover that he hadn’t been home, that the meal she had left the previous
day was untouched. The reason was always a patient whose progress, or lack thereof, was giving cause for concern. He didn’t cope well with death, had never managed since . . .
‘Doc?’

‘What?’

She swallowed hard. ‘It has to stop some time, you know.’

‘It will stop, Eva.’

‘I suppose you’re talking about the storm,’ she said.

‘Of course. What else?’

She hesitated, unsure of herself for once. Ten years. Ten bloody years, and he still bought roses. There was a selfishness in this one area of the man. He had lost his wife, but so had many
others. For a whole decade, he had continued to mourn Mary as if she had died yesterday. She wouldn’t have wanted that. Mary Collins, a nurse from the Women’s, had married the
best-looking, most appreciated young doctor in the city.

Their devotion to each other had been almost palpable. And Mary had died. She’d left a devastated wreck of a husband, three more or less grown-up kids who hadn’t known whether they
were coming or going, and a housekeeper who’d felt like running away. But Eva Dawson had remained loyal right up to this very trying day. Although she allowed him to get away with very
little, she knew a good man when she saw one. And this was probably the best of men.

‘The thunder will pass, Eva. There’s thinner cloud on the horizon. Another few minutes, and Thor will take his mischief elsewhere.’

‘She wouldn’t have wanted this for her Drew, Doc. You can’t even move to a more manageable house, can you? And you know better than most that the box under the garden
doesn’t contain her. That’s just her bones now.’

‘Stop,’ he said. And he remembered sitting in the car telling himself that it had to matter, that he had to make use of retirement. People talked these days about closure, about
moving on. For life to have value, must he leave Mary behind? Was that the next thing? Must he seal his heart against memories and hope to open it again elsewhere, not necessarily with another
person, but perhaps with a different activity?

Eva saw that his mouth was tight. There was a point beyond which no one dared pass with Mr Andrew Sanderson, OBE. The children had known it, too. Mary and Andrew, good enough parents, had needed
a lot of time to themselves, and Eva had been employed to pick up the slack. So she’d looked after the kids as well as the house. They’d been so wrapped up in each other, Drew and Mary,
that their offspring had joined them at evening table only when well into their teens. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

‘I know you have a big, generous heart, Eva,’ he said. ‘But she was everything to me. She’s irreplaceable.’

Eva found her tongue again. ‘We’re all irreplaceable, only in the end we go. Nobody gets out of this lot alive, Doc. And that’s proof enough that the world can manage without
us. I mean, the doctors you trained will do your job now. We just have to carry on carrying on, otherwise we’d all end up like you, fixated on somebody who’s not around no more. Time
you pulled yourself together and got a life.’

He glared at her. ‘So you imply that I should remarry? At my age?’

‘I didn’t say that. But sitting out there in all weathers talking to somebody long gone – that’s what they call an obsession, and there’s nothing magnificent about
it. I see you’ve brought her roses again.’ She stopped. His lips were beginning to clamp themselves shut once more. Mourning had been an active occupation these ten years. The man was
polite, and his intentions were good enough, but he couldn’t let go of a dead woman. He was wasting his own right to a decent quality of life. She felt like giving him a good kick up the
bum.

An alarmingly close crack of thunder erupted right over their heads. At the same time, a rear door crashed inward, and something brown streaked through the drawing room, out into the hall and up
the stairs. ‘We seem to have been invaded,’ Andrew said. ‘Not Vikings again, I hope. They made enough of a mess last time, all that rape and pillage.’

Eva blinked and closed her gaping mouth. She recalled her ma’s behaviour during thunderstorms. ‘Always keep the back door and the front door open,’ Eva’s mother had said.
‘That way, if you get a fireball off the lightning, it’ll go straight through instead of setting fire to the house.’ Were fireballs brown? Did they make clacking noises as they
crossed floors? And was the house about to go up in flames?

‘That fast-moving article was a dog of some sort,’ Andrew said.

‘Was it?’

He nodded. ‘I think so. Might have been a greyhound. If it was, we should back it – it shifted like . . . dare I say greased lightning?’

The look delivered by Eva at this point might have pinned a lesser man to the wall. ‘Even your sense of humour is warped,’ she told him. ‘Well.’ She folded her arms.
‘You’d better try and catch it, eh? I’ve enough on round here without bloody dogs.’

Andrew liked dogs. He and Mary had appreciated most animals. Her horse, kept at livery near Little Crosby, was long gone, but she’d always wanted a dog or two. ‘When we retire, Drew,
we might consider breeding retrievers,’ she used to say. Had she sent the dog? If she had, she must have slapped a first class stamp on it, since it had certainly arrived at speed. Air mail,
perhaps? Or had she ordered special delivery via a courier? ‘I’ll get it,’ he advised Eva. ‘You stay where you are and enjoy the storm.’

‘Don’t leave me, Doc. The thunder might come back.’

So here he stood between a terrified woman and a frightened dog. ‘Oh, behave yourself,’ he snapped before leaving the room. What was she expecting? The Day of Judgement?

This time, he noticed his house. In recent years, it had been the place in which he had eaten and slept, but from now on it would be his base. Joseph and Andrew Sanderson, father and son, had
made the curved banisters, monks’ benches, doors, hardwood window-frames. The four-poster was their work, as were most timber items in the house. ‘I’m a good carpenter,’ he
whispered to himself. But it had all been for Mary . . .

Kneeling on the floor, he peered under the bed he had shared with his wife until she had died here ten years ago. The canine cowered under Mary’s side of the bed.

‘Hello. I’m Andrew. What the hell are you?’

No reply was forthcoming. Andrew walked to the door. ‘Eva?’

‘Yes?’

‘Bring some bits of meat. This poor thing’s starving.’

‘I can’t move.’

‘You bloody can, and you bloody will. Meat. Small pieces, raw or cooked, whatever you can find.’

He returned to his lowly position. ‘You have to come out,’ he said. ‘You can’t stay under here for the rest of your life. That’s no way to carry on.’ He was a
hypocrite. The poor animal was only hiding, and Andrew was contemplating similar behaviour.

‘Ruff.’

‘That was nearly a bark.’ Andrew stretched out an arm. ‘Come on.’

The dog blinked. Life thus far had not been good, and he didn’t trust these long, two-legged things. Yet he knew he must choose between safety and danger, so perhaps this one might be a
genuine pack leader? How many times had he placed faith in humanity only for the breed’s badness to be proved all over again?

A plastic dish arrived with another human attached to it. Eva knelt next to her employer and stared into the visitor’s hungry, bright eyes. ‘Here, doggy,’ she said. ‘Get
yer dentures round this lot, eh?’

The animal edged forward, plunged his head into the bowl and inhaled its contents in seconds.

‘Jesus, Mary and—’ Eva didn’t get as far as Joseph, because thunder rattled the air yet again. ‘I’m going under the stairs,’ she said when the sound
rumbled away. For a woman in her mid-fifties, she certainly moved at speed.

‘It’s no longer overhead.’ Andrew closed his mouth. She had gone. He looked at the dog. Like Oliver Twist, the intruder held the bowl as if asking for more. Unlike the
Dickensian character, this one carried the empty vessel between his jaws. Slowly, he emerged, dropped the dish and licked Andrew’s face with a long, hopeful tongue. Andrew, who disagreed
strongly with those who promoted the idea that cleanliness was almost godliness, ignored the event; if people didn’t have simple germs to fight, they would never fight even simple germs.
‘I have to get my friend the vet,’ he announced seriously. ‘You need professional help.’

A ridiculous string of a tail twitched. The fur was soft as silk, while huge ears seemed unable to make up their minds. The bits fastened to his head appeared to want to stand up, like those of
an Alsatian, but huge flaps hung down, not quite touching his face. ‘You’re neither one thing nor another, boy.’ Yes, the dog was male, but very young. When fully grown, he would
be tall enough to clear a table with that tail.

‘What the hell do I know about dogs? Who sent you to me? Was she pretty, with dark hair and bright blue eyes? Did she say I’d be needing you?’

Once again, the pathetic excuse for a tail moved.

‘Are you a Great Dane?’

‘Ruff.’

‘Quite. It is rough. The Irish Sea’s on bad terms with the river, Eva’s hiding from the storm, probably in a cupboard under the stairs, and I’m talking to a dog who
doesn’t know what he is. This is probably as good as it’s going to get round here. You need younger playmates.’ Andrew paused. ‘Or perhaps you don’t.’ The poor
thing looked as if he might appreciate calm and predictability. But would he respect Eva’s parquet floors, or might those dinner-plate feet do damage?

‘I’m going before the rain kicks off again.’ Eva’s dulcet tones crashed up the stairwell, seeming to hit every step in their path.

‘Do you want a lift?’ he called.

‘No. You’d better stay with that daft bugger. It seems to like you.’ A pause was followed by, ‘You suit one another.’ The double front doors slammed.

‘Well, that’s us told,’ Andrew advised his companion. ‘Don’t go anywhere.’

He picked up the bedside phone and dialled Keith’s number. Keith Morgan, a friend of long standing, was now able to stand even longer after a hip replacement performed by Andrew.
‘Keith?’

‘Hi, Andrew. What’s up?’

‘I’m up. Upstairs. Something ran into the house during the storm. Four legs, a tail, ridiculous ears.’

‘Right. Is it a meow, a woof or a neigh?’

‘The middle one. I think. It doesn’t speak English, so it must be a foreigner. It’s very hungry.’

‘Any biting?’

‘No, I managed to restrain myself.’

‘Andy, I wish you’d start talking in a straight line. I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

He sat with the dog. ‘See, I don’t know what to do with you.’ That was a lie; he knew exactly what he was going to do. ‘We should look for your owner, but you’re
afraid of something or other. And I think, in the daft, unexplored acres of my mind, that Mary sent you. Well, something sent you.’ He placed a hand on a bony ribcage. ‘Let’s see
what Keith says when he gets here. Follow me to the ground floor. Immediately.’

Downstairs, the animal curled himself in the inglenook as near as possible to the drawing-room wood burner. In this position he was tiny, all bones, ears and feet. Andrew studied the paws.
Metatarsals seemed to stretch halfway up the leg – this was going to be an item of some size. But the worried frown, those sad eyes, the obvious hunger, meant that the whole was needy.
Overgrown claws indicated that the pup had not been exercised adequately, and—

Keith entered the scene. Immediately, the dog stiffened and began to shake. ‘So this is what the wind blew in,’ said the vet. He held out a closed hand and waited till the pup
accepted him with a wet tongue. After touching a gold-brown-reddish coat, Keith delivered the first diagnosis. ‘It’s roughly half French mastiff. A red one. Bordeaux. They have
incredibly soft fur. The markings too, see the blaze of white down his chest? That long, thin tail also betrays his ancestry. The tail will fill out. In fact, the whole article will fill
out.’