Parallel Life (19 page)

Harrie agreed. ‘Very true. But I declare this meeting closed, because our mother is inebriated.'

As Lisa climbed the stairs, she clung to two things. One was the banister rail; the other was the realization that she had just met two wonderful young people. They could be her friends now.

Seven

‘Ooh, look what the wind blows in on a Thursday when you think everything's all right with the world.' Freda Nuttall stepped back and allowed her son to enter the bungalow. She couldn't believe her eyes. Where the hell had he been since . . . since whenever she had last seen him? Yes, it had been when she had returned from holiday. How long ago was that? Another senior moment, she thought ruefully as she led the errant offspring into her best room. ‘Where've you been?' she asked when he showed no sign of opening the conversation.

‘Here and there,' he answered. ‘And it's Wednesday.'

She pursed her lips. ‘Oh aye? Well, you look like nobody owns you. Get a bath. And look in my wardrobe – I think I've a shirt of your dad's in there.'

He didn't move. ‘I've been helping a mate with a job.'

‘Right. I hope it wasn't a bank job, and I hope it wasn't Barclays – they've got my few bob in there.'

He stared at her steadily. ‘You've never had any time for me, have you, Mam?'

‘Don't talk so Fairy Liquid – you're me son. I love you. But I can't stand the bloody sight of you at times. Times like this, when you've been helping a mate, when your wife's thrown you out for messing about, when your kids—'

‘Shut up, Mam,' he begged. ‘I've got a bad head.'

Freda closed her eyes. He had more than a bad head. She felt as if the years had been lined with a guard of honour, every member in blue, every one carrying truncheon and handcuffs. Jimmy had brought more trouble to her door than she really wanted to think about, so she changed the subject. ‘Glad to see your Annie fell on her feet.'

‘You what?'

‘Your Annie. Getting a gradely job like that one, apprentice jeweller at Milne's. See, your bit on the side has a brain, and she spotted a good 'un in your Annie. She'll not go far wrong, that Lisa woman, if she sees Annie's got potential.'

Jimmy closed his gaping mouth with an audible snap. Bloody women. There was this one here, who had given birth to him, who was supposed to nurture and comfort him in all weathers; then Lisa Double-Barrel, who got frightened off by Annie, who made a friend of Annie, who employed Annie . . .

‘I mind Daisy, and Annie's mother has the boys.'

He tried not to grind his teeth. He'd had a rough day of it, and no mistake. Sal was turning bolshie, and he had driven off in his van so that he would be out when she got home from a job she was absolutely useless at. The van had broken down, and he was now covered in oil, hence his unkempt appearance. Sal? Find the gun? She couldn't find the end of her own nose without ordinance survey and a couple of guide dogs. She hadn't even managed to get to know that Annie was employed in one of those damned shops, and she worked in that big, fancy house. Some use she'd turned out to be.

‘Where've you been today, then?' Freda asked.

‘Looking for work.'

‘Last time you had work, Clement Atlee was in charge.'

‘Who?'

‘Never mind. Even I wasn't alive when he was putting the boot in. At least, I think I wasn't. What sort of work, anyway? I could do with my garden clearing if you're at a loose end.'

He ignored her and gazed round the room. No, they wouldn't have brought the gun here, would they? Not to an old woman's bungalow. It would be up Weaver's Weft and hidden in Weaver's Warp, probably under some floorboards or up in the gods with the granny.

‘Jimmy?'

‘Aye?'

‘What is it you want from life?'

‘I want that flaming gun back, is what. Them Compton-Milnes have got me over a barrel – aye – a gun barrel. How do I know they won't give it to the police?'

Freda shrugged. ‘You don't know. But you'd best steer clear of Annie, the kids and Lisa, or they might just hand you over to the coppers.'

‘I never shot anyone.'

‘So you said.'

‘I need it back, Mam. I can't rest till it's in the sea or buried under a ton of concrete. I can't get on with me life while they hold that thing, can I? If I go to my house, if I try to see my kids, if I drop me aitches – how can I start again when she has all my cash and she's sitting in my house? You have to help me, Mam.'

She leaned forward. ‘If I could make you straight, Jimmy, I would lay down and die. Just to see you in a proper job with a wage and no stealing, I'd climb in my coffin here and now. But I know you, love. I can't help you. You'll not alter. I grieve for you, honest, I do. You were such a lovely baby.'

Jimmy stared down at her. She'd been a looker, had Mam. She'd worked damned hard all her life, and he had turned out to be her biggest disappointment. Something akin to guilt invaded his chest and he could scarcely breathe or swallow.

He would never be able to explain what he did next, not in a month of Sundays. Jimmy Nuttall bent and kissed his mother's grey, frizzled hair. ‘Ta-ra, Mam,' he managed before leaving the house.

Freda sat still for a long time after her son had gone. She finally stirred herself to make a cup of tea before her soaps started. ‘He's in a right state,' she told herself. And she wasn't referring to the oil smeared on clothes and face, the dirt edging his fingernails. Jimmy was desperate. Should she phone Annie and warn her? Warn her about what, tell her what? That Jimmy was wearing dirty clothes, that he had kissed his mother as if saying goodbye for the last time?

The
Emmerdale
music was playing when she switched on her TV. Freda took a mouthful of tepid tea and stared at the screen. But if anyone were to ask her, later, what had happened in the Dales that night, she could not have answered.

At least twice a year, Sheila Barton made the trip to Tonge Cemetery in order to lay flowers on her parents' grave and on the final resting place of her husband. It was all she could do for them now, and, as a dutiful daughter and widow, she felt she had to go out of her way to mark the lives of the people who had created her. She also needed to leave a token on the monument of the man who had left her two houses and complete freedom from children.

There was a dilemma, however. Space in the family grave would feel more welcoming than that in her husband's. She hadn't wanted to lie down with him in life, so she would prefer not to spend eternity in his company. The problem reared its head on every visit and, as she grew older, the difficulty became more pressing. Dead was dead, yet she cared about where her bones would rest after life had deserted her. It wasn't right, and she knew it. A wife should join her husband from altar to grave and beyond, but she felt she simply could not be at peace with Sid.

She stood over him, read the wording etched in stone, remembered choosing the text – MUCH LOVED HUSBAND OF SHEILA. ‘I never loved you,' she said dolefully. ‘I'm sorry, Sid, but I'm going in with Mam and Dad. I knew them better, you see. Thirty-odd years is a long time, and I still miss them. You were good to me, I know that. But I couldn't rest, not here, not with you. Please, please forgive me.'

With moisture in her eyes, she crossed the cemetery and stood by the grave of Enid and Alan Armstrong. They had been the best mam and dad a person could ever have. She remembered Dad giving her the yolk of his egg, Mam brushing her hair and making her pretty. Sheila had never been pretty, but her parents had viewed her through rose-tinted lenses. She had owned a dolls' house with working lights, a beautiful dolls' pram, the best tricycle.

Perhaps those things were nothing compared to property, yet Sheila knew that Mam and Dad had denied themselves in order to furnish her with all she needed and much of what she wanted. This would be her last place on earth, then. People could talk all they liked, because she would not be around to hear the gossip.

As she rose, after placing a bunch of flowers in the pot, she noticed a man two rows away from her. She knew that figure. Even with his back turned towards her, he remained recognizable. What was he doing here? And why were his shoulders shaking? He hadn't said a word about anyone dying. She stood completely still and watched him for several seconds. It was plain that he was heartbroken. Professor Gustav Compton-Milne weeping? That cool, calm, brilliant man standing by a grave and allowing emotion to spill? Impossible.

Sheila bent down behind her parents' headstone and waited for him to leave the graveyard. She squatted for so long that cramp began to set in, but she didn't want him to see her. It was important that she should remain invisible, because she had seldom encroached on his private life and had merely been an ear when he had dropped snippets of information. He was a disappointed man, that was plain. Yet there he stood, head bent, shoulders moving, back shaking as he cried. Even from this distance, she could see that the plot over which he stood was not newly dug, so the deceased had not made his or her exit recently.

It occurred to her that she was some female version of a peeping Tom, as this was a personal moment to which she ought never have been privy. She stayed. She stayed until he had turned away and walked out through the main gates, then, after pulling herself up into a standing position and waiting for the cramp to subside, she walked over to the place where he had stood.

There were lilies on the grave. Just pure, white lilies from whose centres orange tongues reached as if in search of sunshine. Behind the flowers, a wreath of dark green leaves made a bed fit to support such simple, beautiful blooms. Sheila felt privileged, because she was now standing right at the centre of Gus's heart.

The words were simple, the message brief. In marble, the headstone stated: ‘KATHERINA LOUISA BARFORD DIED 1 JUNE 1983.' Underneath, in lower case, the legend read: ‘Greatly loved and sadly missed
.
'
Sheila scratched her head. Sadly missed by whom? By him and only him? Where were her parents, sisters, brothers? Who had buried this woman?
I don't know who you are
, Sheila thought,
but you've a grand man visiting you
. There was grief in him, she'd already known that. Sometimes, at the table, he would pause between mouthfuls and stare into the near distance – was the occupant of this grave the cause of his occasional absence from actuality?

Sheila shivered. It was a warm enough day, yet she suddenly felt chilled to the backbone. She wished that he would open up to her. Should she say that she had seen him here today? Or did he want to continue holding his unhappiness inside? He was a very private man – who seemed cold at times, who dealt with practicalities, who played with trains and got excited about cures for disease. But here, today, he had sobbed his heart out. Here, he had felt something very real and deeper than the grave.

Sheila left the cemetery without reaching a decision, but the sadness she felt for him remained with her for a very long time.

Hermione half-listened as Eileen prattled on. In the middle of a crossword, the old woman would have preferred to have been left to herself, but Eileen Eckersley was on her high horse, and nothing would bring her down until she fell at some impossible fence.

‘Slow down,' ordered Hermione, putting down the newspaper with the air of one finally succumbing to divine intervention.

‘She didn't see me. I was doing the creeping about like a mouse looking for cheese. And I saw her. I did. With my own two eyes, I saw her plain as day.'

Hermione bit back a quip about the impossibility of using any other eyes. ‘Mrs Potter, I take it?'

‘Right up the chimbley, she was.'

‘What?'

‘She was right up the chimbley, with just her hindquarters sticking out. She looked like a cow tethered ready for the visiting bull, so she did.'

Hermione ordered herself not to laugh. ‘Did she see you?'

‘Only if she has eyes in her nether areas. I mean, what is a woman doing with her head stuck up there?'

Hermione shrugged. ‘Looking for Father Christmas?'

‘It's near July!'

Hermione gritted her teeth. Eileen had got it into her head that the new woman was up to no good. This was probably because the cleaner had been hired to do all the jobs Eileen had been doing downstairs. Perhaps Eileen was feeling usurped, feeling her age, getting paranoid, even.

‘You'll have to talk to her,' announced the carer. ‘Because it's not my place to ask why she's emptying cupboards and pulling the kitchen to bits and poking about up chimbleys. She's had the contents of sideboards spread from here to Rivington Pike, and I even found her trying to take up the carpet.'

Hermione sighed. ‘Everybody approaches cleaning differently. She goes into too much detail, takes the job too seriously.'

‘Is she a chimbley sweep on top of all else? Because she's brought no special brushes along with her, I can tell you that for no money. Normal people don't go prodding around in grates, do they? And you don't pick up fitted carpets to clean underneath. There's something very wrong about that woman, may the good Lord forgive me for saying so.'

Hermione, whose patience was thinning, tapped her pen on the table. ‘Four down,' she said. ‘Something used to strangle an Irishwoman.' She looked up. ‘Any ideas? Because garrotte doesn't fit.'

Eileen folded her arms. ‘When all the silver's gone and—'

‘But there's nothing missing. Eileen, if this carries on, I shall need a double dose of the pain pills. If I could walk, I'd be out of here in two shakes of that cow's tail – the one you have waiting for the bull. You've not a shred of evidence against Mrs Potter. Just because she does things differently – that doesn't mean she's a thief or a murderer. Does it?'

‘No, but—'