Laceys of Liverpool (34 page)

Cormac didn’t doubt it. He knew how easy it was to love someone to distraction, yet treat them with terrible cruelty. At this very moment he was breaking Alice’s heart, but his own heart was cold and he didn’t care. ‘Maeve and Martin haven’t had children so far,’ he said.
‘They’re too wrapped up in their house in Waterloo. Orla still only has the four – they’re growing up, Lulu’s already a teenager. Grandad’s retired. He’s seventy-two, but as fit as a fiddle, and Bernadette and the kids are just fine.’

‘And Mam?’

‘How do you think, sis?’ Cormac shooed away the dog whose life he’d saved and that had repaid him with a growl. ‘You walked out seven years ago and haven’t been seen since and her only son has more or less resigned from the human race.’

‘Hmm.’ Fion gripped her knees. ‘I never visualised you becoming a hippy, Cormac. I’ve always imagined you working in a laboratory, mixing noxious liquids, or whatever it is you do in laboratories, having left university loaded with honours and distinctions. You did, didn’t you?’ she said anxiously when Cormac pulled a face.

‘I didn’t finish my degree, Fion. I didn’t go back for the last two terms. Alice did her nut. I just missed having to do National Service, I’m pleased to say, otherwise I would have had to register as a conscientious objector.’

‘Why do you keep calling her Alice, Cormac? She’s our mam.’

He’d love to tell someone, share the knowledge that had been gnawing away at his soul for three and a half years.

‘Why, Cormac?’ Fion persisted.

‘If I tell you, will you promise never to repeat it to a living soul?’

‘Cross my heart.’

Cormac took a deep breath. His head felt lighter as he began to relate the story of his twenty-first birthday party, finding Aunt Cora in the kitchen, the terrible things she’d said. ‘I can’t describe how I felt afterwards.
My feet no longer felt as if they were on firm ground. I felt unreal, like a ghost. Living in Amber Street was a great big lie. I couldn’t talk to Alice any more. I didn’t know what to say, and what I did say sounded stiff and unnatural.’ He shook himself, as if trying to rid himself of the memory of that dreadful period. ‘I knew it was a waste of time going back to university; my brain seemed to have frozen solid and refused to work. The only place that I could stand was the Cavern, where I was able to drown in the music, it was so loud and I didn’t have to think. It was there I met an old mate from St Mary’s who was trying to get a pop group together to rival the Beatles. I joined as general dogsbody and chief tambourine player. I’ve been on the road with different groups ever since. I’m afraid none has come even remotely close to rivalling the Beatles.’

‘No other group ever will.’ Fion rocked back and forth on the stool. She didn’t look as shocked as Cormac had expected. She said, slowly and thoughtfully, ‘If I were you, Cormac, I wouldn’t believe Cora. I reckon she’s jealous, that’s all, what with you doing so well and their Maurice being in prison – I met Neil Greene once in London and he told me. She was always trying to stir things up. Look at what she did to Mam with that agreement thing.’

‘But, Fion,’ Cormac wailed. ‘I look so much like her. No one’s ever noticed before. When you think about it, it’s obvious she’s my mother.’

Fion regarded him in the light falling through the window of the caravanette. ‘I don’t see a resemblance meself. You’re probably just imagining it.’

Cormac shivered. ‘I can’t stand the thought of her being me mother. I have nightmares about it.’ He often dreamed of how it might have happened, of Cora slithering through the sleeping hospital, arriving at the
nursery, changing him over with Maurice. ‘Maurice looked a better bet,’ she’d said.

‘If I were you,’ Fion said again, ‘I wouldn’t take any notice of Cora. I’d try and pretend she never told you all that stuff.’ She linked her arm in his. ‘I’ll never think of you as anything other than me brother, Cormac, and I know Orla and Maeve feel the same. Grandad thought the sun shone out of your arse. And Mam – you’re not being very fair on Mam, luv.’

‘Could you forget if it were you it had happened to?’

‘No, but I’d want someone to talk to me the way I’m talking to you. It’s almost quarter of a century since you were born and whatever happened that night isn’t important any more. It’s what’s happened since that matters.’ She gave him a little shake. ‘You’re Mam’s son, our brother, Colin’s and Bonnie’s uncle.’

‘But say if I’m not, Fion?’

‘You
are
,’ Fion said confidently. ‘I remember the day Mam brought you home from hospital. You felt like me brother then, every bit as much as you do now. We all laid claim to you, Cormac. You’re
ours
.’

Cormac was beginning to feel as if there was a way out of the morass in which he had been wallowing for so long. If he could just hold on to the fact that what Cora said didn’t matter after all this time, that it was how things were
now
that was important. ‘What about Uncle Billy,’ he said, ‘and Maurice?’

‘I doubt if Uncle Billy gave a damn who Cora brought home from the hospital. As for Maurice . . .’ She paused.

‘I owe him a debt worth more than a kingdom,’ Cormac said softly.

‘
You
don’t owe him a thing. If it’s all true, not that for a moment I think it is, then I suppose it’s hard luck on Maurice.’ She wrinkled her nose. ‘Well, worse than hard luck, having Cora for a mam.’

‘Particularly instead of Alice. He would have grown up a different person altogether in Amber Street. He wouldn’t have gone to prison for a start.’

‘You can’t say that for certain.’

‘Yes, I can,’ Cormac assured her.

‘What’s he doing now?’

‘Living in the flat over the hairdresser’s, where Neil used to live. Cora chucked him out.’

‘She’s mad,’ Fion said flatly. ‘She’s not likely to say anything about this to Mam, is she? That would really put the cat among the pigeons.’

‘I doubt it. I told her if she did I’d kill her. I meant it, Fion. It makes me wonder if one day I might go mad too.’

‘Don’t be silly. You’re the sanest person I’ve ever known.’

‘Once maybe, not now.’

‘I’m going to tell
you
a secret, then I’ll make us some tea and sandwiches.’ Fion regarded him slyly. ‘You’ll never guess, but Mam was having an affair with Neil Greene. It was the reason I left home. I heard them in bed together and it made me feel such a fool.’

Cormac smiled. ‘I already knew that, sis. You couldn’t help but notice the way her eyes went all starry when she announced she was “popping round” to Opal Street for some reason. They were even starrier when she came back.’

‘Jaysus, Cormac Lacey! Nothing escaped your gimlet eyes.’

Fion went to make the sandwiches. Cormac leant against the back of the van, suddenly conscious of the music in the distance. He’d forgotten where he was. The lane was busy. Children were being brought home from the concert and latecomers were on their way towards it. Two girls, conventionally dressed, rode by on bicycles – he’d
like to bet the young people of the area weren’t as opposed to the festival as their elders.

The sky above was as clear as sapphire with a twinkling of stars and a perfectly round moon, but at the edges, just above the horizon, black clouds were banked, looking as impenetrable as mountains. This effect of nature, both impressive and oppressive, made Cormac feel very small, insignificant, in the great scheme of things. Looked at one way, the bombshell that had been dropped on the night of his twenty-first seemed trivial, not worth bothering about.

He wouldn’t have minded a spliff, but his stuff was under his pillow in the coach and he didn’t feel like going back, not yet. Anyroad, Fion might not approve of spliffs. He was grateful to his sister for bringing him down to earth, showing him there was a future.

As soon as he could, without letting down his friends, he would extricate himself and Pol from the life they were leading – from the life they were
wasting
– and . . .

Cormac paused in his reverie. Two young men were walking past, bare to the waist, supporting a girl between them. In their free hands the men wielded bottles of the local cider, a lethal concoction. The girl stumbled. The men roughly hoisted her upright. One squeezed her bottom through the thin cotton frock that looked ominously familiar.

Pol! She rarely drank. Half a bottle of that lethal brew and she’d be senseless. It was possible she was being taken back to the coach for her own safety, but somehow Cormac doubted it. He leapt to his feet. He had to rescue Pol.

It meant that when Fion emerged from the van with tea and sandwiches, her brother had gone.

It might have continued for ever and a day: the spliffs, the drink, missing gigs, driving nowhere, doing nothing, had it not been that Pol discovered she was pregnant.

‘I can get the bread together for an abortion,’ Frank said when they sat round the table for a conference. Everyone had been on tenterhooks waiting for Pol to start her period, but she’d missed two and was definitely pregnant. They wore a motley assortment of coats and jackets because it was November, and no one had any idea how to keep the coach warm, apart from using an oil heater, which brought on Wally’s asthma. Being on the road had its disadvantages in winter. ‘Abortion’s legal in this country, isn’t it?’

No one knew.

‘I don’t want an abortion whether it’s legal or not,’ Pol said defiantly. ‘I want my baby.’ She laid her hands on her stomach, as if she could already feel its shape inside.

‘Don’t be foolish,’ Tanya snapped. ‘This is no life for a baby.’ A baby would clutter up their already cluttered lives. Tanya was very conventional. Cormac sometimes wondered if she was only there to annoy her family and had the firm intention of returning home when she felt she’d annoyed them long enough.

‘I’ll go away,’ Pol said. ‘I’ll find a place to live, a bedsit, probably in London. The state will support me. I mean, us.’

‘Who’s the father?’ Wally asked.

‘I don’t know, do I? It’s either you, you, or you.’ Pol nodded one by one at the three men.

‘I’m afraid I can’t offer monetary support, Pol.’

‘No one’s asked you to, Wally.’

‘I’ll buy the pram and the diapers and stuff, honey.’

‘Thank you, Frank.’

‘Come back to Liverpool and live with me, Pol,’ Cormac said, wincing as he massaged the wrist that had
been broken months ago when he’d rescued Pol from the two louts who turned out not to be taking her back to the coach, but to their own ex-Post Office van. The plaster had only been removed last week.

Everyone looked at him in surprise, including Pol. ‘Hey, man. Isn’t that a bit heavy?’ Wally murmured.

‘Live with you, Cormac?’ Pol’s grey eyes smiled into his. ‘Why, I’d like that very much.’

‘Oh, well, that’s settled,’ Tanya said, as if they’d just decided which pub to go to. ‘Would anyone like a cup of tea?’

Billy Lacey strolled along the Dock Road, a woman on his arm whose name he couldn’t remember. It was August and still very hot, despite the lateness of the hour – at that moment Cormac Lacey was sitting in a remote Norfolk lane with his sister, Fionnuala.

The Docky wasn’t nearly so busy as it had been when Billy was a lad and he’d come with his brother, John, to look at the ships. There was hardly any traffic, hardly any ships to look at. Even the smells had gone: the musky aroma of spices, coffee, perfumed teas and the strange, dusty smell that turned out to be carpets. He considered it a poor show that such a vital, throbbing part of Liverpool was being allowed to waste away and die. Only the moon, swinging freely – Billy was drunk – in the navy-blue sky and the soaring brick walls of the docks, the giant gates, remained the same.

Despite the jowlly cheeks and the monstrous beer gut that had long ago cancelled out his waist, leaving his trousers somewhat perilously supported by a narrow leather belt, at fifty-four, Billy was still a fine figure of a man, with his thick, dark hair and broad shoulders. A cheap suit adorned his burly body, the jacket hanging open because it wouldn’t meet round his swollen belly. Yet he carried himself well. Not a few female eyes were cast in his direction as he swaggered along, linking the arm of his anonymous companion. She was taking him
home for a nightcap. Billy wasn’t sure which he was most looking forward to, the drink or what was to follow.

‘Have you got a missus?’ enquired the woman who was leading him towards the longed-for nightcap and her bed.

‘She’s left me,’ Billy lied. For years now, possibly since the day after the wedding, he’d wished Cora would leave. He would have left himself, except he couldn’t be bothered looking for somewhere else to live. Anyroad, he’d have to cook his own food, make his own bed, do his own washing. It was comfortable in Garibaldi Road, if nothing else. He and Cora hardly talked, but he wouldn’t mind if she never opened her mouth again for the rest of her life. It was sad about Maurice: first jail, then leaving home, but Billy had never really felt that Maurice was his son. He belonged to Cora, who spoiled the poor lad rotten when she wasn’t thrashing him with that bloody cane. He’d probably ended up dead confused. Billy knew he should have put a stop to it, but he’d never been much of a match for his wife.