Monday Girl (15 page)

‘You two-faced bugger! Who else have you been sticking it into, you bloody liar?’ He hung his head and remained silent, and Renee, who had never seen, nor heard, her mother swearing before, burst into hysterical sobs, remembering the other girl at the Bay of Nigg, who had, no doubt, also believed his seductive lies. The trouble was, he was so convincing and persuasive that any girl would have trusted him.

‘Well?’ Anne demanded again. ‘Who else?’

He lifted his head slowly. ‘I haven’t been with anybody else, Anne,’ he said earnestly. ‘Just you and Renee.’ He glanced at the girl, as if willing her to keep silent about what she’d seen on her walk with Tim and Jack.

‘So you were sorry for me, were you?’ Anne shouted. ‘A broken-down middle-aged widow, with nobody to protect her? And a fifteen-year-old virgin for afters, was that it?’

‘No, Anne, it wasn’t like that,’ he mumbled, but she didn’t let him go any further.

‘I could have you up for that – interfering with an underage girl . . . you . . . you . . .’

‘She was asking for it,’ he interrupted, before she could find a word strong enough to express her contempt. ‘I couldn’t help it, she was always after me. Writing little notes, asking me to meet her, and she wasn’t a virgin!’ His desperation made him say anything to save himself.

Anne turned on her daughter. ‘Who else have you been with, you little tramp?’

Renee sobbed even louder. ‘Nobody else, Mum, I swear to God. I was a virgin, and I’d never have let him touch me if he hadn’t said . . . He said he wanted to be first for me, so I’d always belong to him.’

Anne started pummelling the man’s head. ‘You filthy . . . low-down . . . lying . . . beast!’ At every word, she punched him again, and he sat with his hands up, trying to shield his face.

Anne continued her vicious attack. ‘You can’t . . . find . . . anything . . . to say . . . can you . . . ?

‘Stop it! Stop it!’ Renee rose blindly and ran to the door. She hardly knew how she got up the stairs, but threw herself on top of her bed, sobbing uncontrollably.

 
Chapter Nine

Renee couldn’t tell how long she’d lain there, trying to shut out the noise below, her thoughts in such a turmoil she’d been afraid, for a time, that her head would split wide open. The absolute stillness now terrified her. Had her mother, in her irrational anger, murdered Fergus with a table knife? Or had Fergus stabbed her mother? She swung her legs to the floor, and crept on to the landing, her ears straining to pick up any sound. There was nothing. They surely couldn’t both be . . . unless one had killed the other, then committed suicide?

Her right foot was hovering uncertainly over the top step, when she heard the living-room door being opened and drew it back fearfully. Which one was it, and was whoever it was coming to kill her?

‘Renee, come down and listen to this.’ Anne’s voice was much calmer, but it took the horror-struck girl a full twenty seconds to obey the softly spoken command.

She entered the room in fear and trepidation, although she felt that nothing would surprise her, and her shock at seeing Fergus still sitting at the table, with his head in his hands, was all the greater – an anticlimax. She didn’t want to hear what either of them had to say.

It was Anne who set the ball rolling. ‘I told him to get out,’ she said slowly, her eyes red and swollen, ‘and he’s changed his tune. Now, Fergus, tell Renee what you’ve just told me. It might make her feel better, though I doubt it.’ He looked up, and the girl was shaken when she saw that he, too, had been weeping. ‘I’m sorry for everything,’ he began, quietly, ‘and I’m apologising to both of you.’ Renee’s stomach muscles contracted. Was this what she’d been called down to hear? A bare apology? He couldn’t honestly think he’d get off so lightly? His eyes were on her now, tortured and pleading. ‘I’m sorry for saying you weren’t a virgin, Renee, because you were. I must have been mad, I didn’t know what I was saying. I truly love you, but . . . I love your mother, too. You’ll maybe think it’s impossible to love two people at once, but it’s true.’ He gulped, and transferred his gaze to Anne, begging her to believe him.

She sighed hopelessly. ‘It sounds like the baying of a cornered fox to me, but you’ll have to make up your own mind, Renee. Do you think he’s telling the truth this time?’

‘I don’t know,’ the girl faltered. ‘It’s so . . .’

‘It’s the truth, just the same.’ Fergus looked from one to the other. ‘I fell in love with you first, Anne. Maybe because I was grateful to you for taking me in, like I told Renee, but it soon developed into real love, and I needed you desperately. I didn’t make love to you just for kicks, I really wanted you.’

He shrugged his shoulders pathetically. ‘But you were growing up, Renee, and more beautiful by the day, and I began to love you, too, and started meeting you after your classes, until I had to make love to you, as well. I thought I was safe enough – you’d never tell each other what was going on – and I could go on having you both.’ His head dropped again.

Anne rested her elbows on the table. ‘Needing you, wanting you, making love to you, having you – that’s not all love means.’

‘I love you – both of you,’ he said, without looking up. ‘I want to be near you as much as I can, but . . . sex is part of love, for me, anyway. Don’t send me away, Anne, please!’ She looked at his bowed head for a few seconds. ‘I want to believe you,’ she whispered. ‘I want to, because I loved you, and because I don’t like feeling I’ve been made a fool of. Renee probably thinks the same, but the whole thing’s impossible. I can’t share a lover with my daughter. It’s unthinkable, obscene.’ She paused briefly. ‘I’ll let you stay on here till you find somewhere else to go, but only on condition that you promise never to touch either of us again, or say anything that . . .’ She straightened up. ‘It’s the only sensible way to deal with it, and, Renee, I’m trusting you not to go behind my back, either.’

‘I won’t.’ The girl found her voice again. ‘I don’t want to have anything more to do with him.’

‘I promise I’ll never do anything out of place again.’ Fergus met Anne’s eyes steadily.

‘That’s settled, then.’ Anne leaned back, still rather shaky.

‘Remember, Fergus, it’s only till you find other lodgings, and we’d better not say anything to the other boys about why you’re leaving. They’d only think we’re all mad.’ She swallowed, then gave a short, dry laugh. ‘My God, maybe we are, at that.’

We must be, Renee thought. After the terrible things he’d done, he was getting off scot-free . . . well, almost.

A vestige of his old, charming smile lurked at the edges of the man’s mouth when he lifted his head again. ‘Thank you, Anne . . . Mrs Gordon, but if I promise to behave myself, wouldn’t you . . .’

‘No!’

‘I swear I’ll never . . .’

‘You won’t get the chance,’ Anne said firmly.

His shoulders dropped dramatically, as he stood up. ‘All right. I’ll try to find new digs as soon as I can.’ He walked to the door, turning, before he went out, to say, ‘I won’t be in for tea, but I’ll be home . . . back at bedtime.’

Aware that her mother was holding her breath until the outside door shut quietly, Renee bowed her head as Anne murmured, ‘What a mess.’

With what remained of her heart, Renee wished that she could be transported away from this terrible house; away from her mother – her horrible, despicable mother, whose very existence had turned all those wonderful dreams into nightmares – but she couldn’t move. It was as if she were riveted to her now, her legs and feet paralysed, her innards frozen, her brain, unfortunately, still fiercely active. If only she’d left things as they were, but how could she have known what had been going on behind her back? She should have been warned by what she’d heard when she listened at the dining-room door, but she hadn’t wanted to believe it and Fergus had laughed away her fears. What a liar he was. How could he have looked her in the face and sworn that it was all on her mother’s side, when he’d been . . . oh, it didn’t bear thinking about – but she couldn’t get it out of her head. Fergus and her mother!

Jack had been right about him – and Granny . . . and Sheila Daun. They’d all warned her and she hadn’t listened. It was all her own fault, which made it a thousand times worse. If only she could stand up now and walk out, calmly and with some dignity, but she couldn’t. And where would she go in any case? She couldn’t afford to go into lodgings, she couldn’t go to Granny, she’d be shocked and disgusted if she ever learned what had been going on.

A flood of self-pity welled up in Renee then, and she glanced up to find her mother regarding her with eyes filled with . . . not hatred, nor pity, but – sorrow? Well, it was too late to be sorry.

‘We have to speak Renee,’ Anne said softly. ‘Even when . . . Fergus leaves, we’ll still have to stay together, in spite of what’s happened. We can’t just paper over the cracks.’

Her head down again, the girl muttered, ‘I don’t want to speak to you ever again.’

‘I don’t blame you, Renee,’ Anne went on. ‘He could twist any woman round his little finger, but I was old enough – I shouldn’t have been taken in by his blarney. They say there’s no fool like an old fool, but I wouldn’t believe a single word he said, now.’

Renee kept silent, praying that her mother would take the hint and leave her in peace, but Anne was not to be deterred.

‘I should have suspected you’d been going out with him, when you were supposed to be with Phyllis Barclay, but it never crossed my mind that you didn’t have the money to be going to the pictures every week – that’s how much a blind fool I was. I knew you were attracted to him and I knew he didn’t do anything to stop you, but I never dreamt he’d been . . .’

Her head jerking up, the girl burst out, ‘And I never dreamt he’d been carrying on with you. It makes me sick, just thinking about it – you and him? He told me he loved me, and now I find out he’d been telling you he . . .’

‘We’ve been a pair of bloody fools. We’d better get this cleared up. We’ll leave the rest of our dinner till teatime – I don’t suppose you feel any more like eating than I do. You know, if your father had been alive, he’d have killed Fergus Cooper for what he’s done to us.’

If her father had still been alive, Renee thought, bitterly, this situation would never have arisen. Her mother wouldn’t have needed Fergus to make love to her, and he’d have been . . . She came to an abrupt halt. He wouldn’t have been lodging here at all, and she would never have known him.

Gathering up dishes noisily, her mother said, ‘I could do with a cup of tea, though. How about you?’

‘Yes, please. Er . . . Mum, I’m sorry it was my fault that everything came out like that today.’ Renee lifted the rest of the dirty crockery and followed Anne into the scullery.

‘It had to come out sooner or later, so it was as well to come out today and I’m sorry for the things I said to you. I’m not in the habit of using language like that, but it shows up my lower-class beginnings.’

An awkward restraint fell between them while they washed up then had their cup of tea, each of them regretting what they’d said that day, until Renee felt that she must get out of the house. Where would she go, that was the problem? She couldn’t go to Woodside, because her Granny would see straight away that something was wrong, and Maggie was the last person Anne would want to know about her stupidity.

‘Renee,’ her mother sounded apologetic, ‘if you’ve nothing else to do, maybe you’d do a bit of weeding in the back garden. I’d have done it myself, but there’s two pairs of sheets needing to be turned, for they’re getting thin in the middle.’

Collecting a small trowel and fork from the shed, which had once been the garage, Renee tackled a patch well away from the house, glad that the sun was dimmed by a slight haze. Her physical efforts didn’t prevent her brain from going over every sordid detail of the dreadful drama she’d brought on herself by her determination to have her lover declare himself openly.

Why hadn’t she left things as they were? Now she knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’d been . . . But he couldn’t really love a woman so much older than himself? It must only have been for sex. Digging out a clump of dandelions, she threw it viciously on the path beside her. She was still burning with anger, with hurt, with jealousy, but . . . she couldn’t stop loving Fergus. A person couldn’t turn love off like a tap, no matter what.

After an hour, exhausted by her back-breaking task, she went on to the square of lawn – back green, as Mike had called it – and lay down. The sun was brighter now and she stretched lazily, to let the warmth permeate her body, until the smell of the turf stirred memories of the times she’d spent with Fergus, at the Victoria Park, the Bay of Nigg, the Duthie Park, Hazlehead. She’d never be able to forget him, she reflected, then turned cold as it struck her that they’d never lie anywhere together again. She scrambled to her feet and went back to the house, where Anne dried her eyes surreptitiously as soon as she appeared.

They tried to act naturally with each other throughout their meal, but the unacknowledged antagonism between them could not be ignored, and it would be a long time before they could return to a normal mother–daughter relationship. The jealousy and resentment each felt towards the other was too great, too consuming, to be overlooked and forgotten. They spent the evening in an uncomfortable silence, not really listening to the wireless playing softly in the background – although the Palm Court Orchestra was Anne’s favourite programme – nor concentrating on reading the Sunday newspapers, until Mike and Tim came in just after nine o’clock.

Mike’s face was grim as he sat down. ‘It’s terrible about the war, isn’t it? I thought it was coming, though, a while back. What do you think about it, Mrs Gordon?’

Anne shook her head slowly. ‘I’m afraid it’s going to be another long struggle like the last one.’ Renee had completely forgotten about Chamberlain’s morning announcement, so much had happened since then. The threat of what the war would bring had been overshadowed by the greater tragedy of learning the truth about Fergus, but she felt herself turn cold again at the thought of him having to go and fight.