Laceys of Liverpool (54 page)

‘I bet it’s not a bit like Paris,’ Orla said after he’d gone. ‘But it pleases Micky no end to hear me say it. I’m learning to be nice, though it’s a bit late in the day.’

Alice usually managed to join them for an hour and when Cormac discovered his family met every day, he came over from St Helens whenever he could, so that the five Laceys could be together – after all, time was precious. In a matter of months there would be only four of them left. They talked about the years when they’d only had each other, before husbands and children had
appeared on the scene. They talked about John. Alice found it upsetting that they could remember so little of the time when everything had been perfect in the house in Amber Street, before their father had had the accident and everything had changed.

‘In my mind, there was always a horrible atmosphere,’ Fion claimed.

‘Same here.’ Maeve nodded.

‘I remember hating him so much,’ said Orla.

‘I loved him.’ Cormac made a rueful face. ‘Trouble was, I always had the feeling he didn’t love me back.’

‘He had other things on his mind.’

‘What do you mean, Mam?’ asked Cormac. ‘What other things?’

Alice hesitated before deciding they were old enough to know the truth, old enough for it not to hurt them any more. She told them about the day Lulu was born when she’d gone round to B.E.D.S. and found John with a new young family.

‘You mean he dumped us for another lot?’ Orla gasped, outraged.

‘No, it wasn’t you, his children, that he dumped, it was me, his wife. He found a girl as damaged as himself. But she got better and he began to treat her the same way as he’d done me, and she left him.’

‘Poor dad,’ Cormac said, always the softest. She was glad he was engaged to Vicky who she felt sure would never hurt him as his father had done.

It was strange that Fion, thirty-eight, but a strapping, healthy woman, was the one who suffered most during the early months of pregnancy. She was often sick, her legs swelled, she had dizzy spells, went off her food. Whereas Orla, the invalid, bloomed. Her hair was thick and glossy, her eyes star bright. Her skin had the texture
of the thinnest, finest china and she had never smiled so much. The baby was growing well in her womb.

‘She’s a blessed baby,’ Orla cooed. ‘She’s charmed.’

‘She?’ said Micky.

‘Oh, it’s a girl. She’s another me. She’s coming to take my place after I’ve gone.’

‘No one can ever take your place, sweetheart.’ Micky knelt in front of the chair and laid his face against her stomach. He felt the sharp bones of her hips under his hands and could have sworn he could hear his baby’s heart beating. He wondered how he would manage to get through the next few months without completely breaking down. It was a tremendous effort always to appear composed, to look after the endless guests, engage in conversation, when he was being torn apart inside.

Orla was the only woman he’d ever wanted. He’d loved her since they were fourteen and they’d been in the same class together at school. But this love, burning, wholehearted and totally committed, hadn’t been enough to make her happy. She had slept with other men. She had walked out on him. If it weren’t for the cancer, she would be in an office in St Helens dreaming of even better things. She’d only returned to him and their children because she was dying.

It made him feel guilty for being so glad that she was back. For Micky, a dying Orla was better than no Orla at all and there would be nothing left for him after she had gone.

She ran her fingers through his hair. ‘Cheer up, luv. Life is for enjoying, not enduring.’

‘Don’t say things like that.’

‘Why not? It’s true.’ She lifted up his head, rather painfully, by the ears, and slid into his arms. ‘If I’d had a bit more sense, I would have enjoyed meself more when I had the opportunity. And I’d like to think you’ve got a
lot of years left to enjoy. I’ll be keeping me eye on you, Micky Lavin, from up in heaven.’

He kissed her. ‘They’ll never take you in heaven, Orla. You’ll be keeping an eye on me from a place much warmer than that.’

Lacey’s of Liverpool perfumes were proving a great success. Tender Nights and Tender Mornings came on to the market in June. The lovely face of Andrea Pryce featured prominently in a press and television advertising campaign carried out from London. Andrea and Cormac never met again.

All the big Liverpool stores had extensive displays of the local products: Lewis’s, Owen Owen’s, George Henry Lee’s. Cormac and Vicky were looking for a bigger factory so they could expand their range to include lipstick and face powder.

‘In a few years’ time we’ll do an entire range of makeup,’ Cormac boasted.

‘How can you have aromatherapy mascara and eyebrow pencil?’ Orla wanted to know.

‘Don’t ask awkward questions, sis. We’re working on
it
.’

‘Do you wish you were part of it, luv?’ Micky asked when Cormac had gone.

‘I’m having a baby, Micky, which is far more important.’

Cora Lacey helped herself to a couple of perfumes while she was cleaning the Strand Road salon, the morning one and the night one, though personally she couldn’t tell the difference. They would do as a birthday present for Pol, save buying something.

Alice noticed, but tactfully kept her mouth shut. Cora
was an excellent cleaner and as long as she didn’t make off with one of the dryers she didn’t care.

At the end of August, six months into her pregnancy, Fion started to feel better. The feeling of constant nausea went away, along with the dizziness and the swollen legs. She ate like a horse and developed a passion for apples, which were at least healthy.

Fion, though, would have preferred to remain sick, or indeed feel much worse, if it could have prevented her sister’s sudden deterioration.

Orla was rapidly losing weight, getting thinner and thinner, almost daily it seemed to concerned onlookers. She was having pain more severe than she had known humanly possible. Every nerve in her body shrieked in raw agony. It was the cancer, not the baby.

The baby was all right. The baby was fine. Dr Abrahams, who had adopted her as his special project, confirmed that her child was coming along well when Orla went to see him at the hospital.

‘Would you like some painkillers?’ he asked for the fourth week running.

‘No, doctor.’ Orla shook her head violently. ‘I’ll not forget what Thalidomide did to unborn babies. There’s no way I’m taking so much as an aspirin in case it harms me little girl. I’d sooner have pains than tablets, any day.’

‘You’re a very brave woman, Mrs Lavin.’

‘No, I’m not, doctor. I’m a realist. Anyroad, I’ve learnt that, if I notch meself up a gear, the pain goes away and I can’t feel it any more.’

The doctor looked at the starry eyes in the thin face. ‘You’re a very remarkable woman then, Mrs Lavin. Will you allow me to say that?’

‘I’ve always wanted to be remarkable at something, doctor. I’m glad to have managed it at last.’

Micky’s sole reason for existing was to take care of Orla. The children felt the same. They came straight home from work every night to sit with their mam and hold her hand, to fetch and carry, to bring her anything on earth she wanted.

To please them, to make them feel needed, to make up for the hurt that she had caused them, she asked for a daily newspaper and made a show of reading it, requested cups of tea and glasses of lemonade she didn’t feel like drinking. Maisie massaged her feet which she found extremely irritating. She pretended an interest in football, which she loathed, but Micky and the boys were passionate about it. It meant they could watch the – far too many – matches on the telly without feeling they should be watching something on another channel that Orla would in fact have found ten times more interesting.

September, and the weather was sunny, gently warm. The trees in North Park began to shed their russet leaves and the flowers in the Lavins’ backyard bent their heads and died. The big petal balls on the hydrangeas turned brown. Pretty soon they would become brittle. Next spring they would have to be pruned to make way for new blossoms.

Orla sat on a white plastic chair, knowing she would never see this happen. But her baby would. She laid her hands on her stomach. The baby had been very still this morning. She felt a moment of fear, closed her eyes, concentrated hard and directed all the goodness left in her emaciated body on to the baby, now fully formed in her womb. Her little daughter gave her an almighty kick. Orla gasped with pain and relief.

The other pain she’d learnt to live with. It didn’t matter any more. She’d stepped outside it.

Alice woke up every morning in the silent bedroom of her silent house with a deep sense of foreboding. The next few months would be nightmarish. What would Christmas be like with one of her children gone for ever? She also felt unreasonably depressed that Cormac, her baby, was getting married, which she might not have done if it hadn’t been for Orla. There was a saying: ‘A daughter is a daughter for the rest of her life. A son is a son until he takes a wife.’ She was losing two children. She wouldn’t be needed any more. It only emphasised the fact that she was on her own. The future seemed very bleak.

Then she would get up, pull herself together and prepare for the day ahead. She never let anyone, not even Bernadette, know how low she felt.

Lulu Jackson came back from America a few days before the wedding. Gareth was to fly over nearer the time the baby – Alice’s first great-grandchild – was expected the following month. Alice picked her up from Manchester airport, took her to Pearl Street to see her mother, then to the bungalow where she was to stay. There was plenty of room and she was glad of the company.

‘I like your frock, luv,’ she remarked. Lulu wore a spectacular yellow garment lavishly trimmed with lace with its own little lace bolero.

‘It’s Indian and it’s not really a maternity dress. I can wear it afterwards. I brought one for Mum in cream. I thought she might like to wear it to the wedding. Oh, and I’ve got you a scarf, Gran. There’s this lovely Indian shop right by where we live in Greenwich Village.’

As soon as they’d eaten, Lulu asked if she’d mind if she returned straight to Pearl Street. ‘I’d like to spend the evening with Mum. She looks well, doesn’t she? Far better than I expected. A bit thin, that’s all.’

‘Your mam always manages to put on a show, Lulu. And I wouldn’t build up your hopes too much that she’ll be at the wedding. It’s not exactly close, way over the other side of Warrington. Apart from the hospital, she hasn’t been outside the house in months.’

Lulu’s pretty blue eyes filled with tears. ‘She was always bursting with life, me mum. She was the only person who encouraged me to marry Gareth. Everyone else thought marrying an artist was daft. And she thought going to New York was a great idea.’

‘She saw you doing the things she’d wanted to do herself,’ Alice said sadly. ‘Anyroad, luv, come on. I was intending to spend the evening at Pearl Street meself. You’ll find the house bursting at the seams.’

It was raining steadily on the Saturday of the wedding. The sky was a miserable grey, heavy with clouds, and there wasn’t the faintest sign of blue.

Lulu emerged from her room in an even more magnificent frock than the one she’d arrived in: tangerine silk with an embroidered bodice and long, loose sleeves. Her hat was merely a circle of velvet trimmed with net.

‘You make me feel very drab,’ Alice remarked as she glanced in the hall mirror at her plain blue suit and conventional flowered hat.

‘You look lovely, Gran. But then I can never remember a time when you didn’t.’

The young woman and the much older one kissed lovingly. Alice smiled. ‘That’s a nice thing to say, but I can’t help noticing me hair’s as grey as the sky outside.’

‘You
still
look lovely. I hope I look as beautiful when I’ve got grey hair.’

‘Flattery will get you everywhere, Lulu. I’ll be changing me will in your favour as soon as I get back.
We’d better be off. The coach is due in Marsh Lane at half past ten and I’ve promised to show meself in the hairdresser’s before we leave.’

A coach had been hired for the bridegroom’s guests. The men were pleased. They wouldn’t need their cars so could drink as much as they liked.