Red Sky in the Morning (27 page)

‘And yours, sir?’

‘Nowt to do with you,’ Tony growled. ‘And don’t you print that picture in the paper else I’ll bust your camera for you. Come on, Maisie, we’re
going.’

Maisie smiled quickly at the young photographer. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to go.’

As they began to move away, the photographer beckoned to the big man still standing in the stage door. They heard a shout and saw ‘Max Miller’ striding towards them. ‘Wait a
minute, I want a word with you—’

‘Come on, Maisie,’ Tony grabbed her arm. ‘Run for it.’

By the time they rode into the farmyard at a quarter to twelve all hell had broken loose.

Anxiety had driven Anna to come down to the farm. The three of them – Anna, Eddie and Bertha – were standing outside the back door. It was the first time that Anna had come face to
face with Bertha in sixteen years.

‘Where are they? Where’s Tony taken her?’

‘My Tony wouldn’t take that little trollop anywhere. Like mother, like daughter, I say. I heard about her at that dance in the village.’ Bertha nodded sagely, her jowls
wobbling. ‘Making an exhibition of ’ersen. Dancing with every Tom, Dick and Harry.’

‘He was taking her to Sally’s house in Ludthorpe. But she should have been back hours ago. Where is he? Is he here?’ Anna was close to hysteria. ‘I’ve been on edge
all day. There was a funny sky this morning. I don’t like it. Something bad’s going to happen. I know it is.’

‘Now, now, love. Calm down.’ Eddie tried to pour oil on what were becoming very troubled waters. ‘Tony wouldn’t let any harm come to Maisie—’

Bertha’s mouth twisted. ‘Oh “love”, is it? Oh well, now we know, don’t we?’ She turned to face Anna, adding sarcastically, ‘Of course he wouldn’t
let any harm come to his
sister
, now would he?’

Anna gasped. ‘His – his sister?’

‘Well, half-sister?’

Anna stared at the woman for a moment and then began to laugh, but it was hysterical laughter. ‘After all this time you still think that?’

Bertha thrust her face close to Anna’s. ‘Why else would you stay here all these years? Why else would you bury yourself away in the back o’ beyond. Unless you were where you
wanted to be. With ’im.’ At this she jabbed her husband in the chest.

Anna, her anxiety over Maisie forgotten for the minute, shook her head sadly. ‘You’re mad. Eddie’s just a kind man who deserves better than you—’

‘Now, now.’ Eddie tried to placate the two women again. ‘Don’t let’s get into all that. It’s Maisie we should be thinking about—’

At that moment they heard the distant roar of the bike and turned towards the yard expectantly as the sound grew closer and at last turned in through the gate.

Anna flew across the yard. She dragged Maisie off the pillion and fired questions at her so fast that the girl had no time to answer. Then Anna rounded on Tony.

‘And as for you, don’t you come near her again. Do you hear me? Not ever.’

As Anna dragged her daughter away, Maisie glanced back over her shoulder. Tony was watching her. Their eyes met and held in a gaze until, through the darkness, they could no longer see each
other’s face.

Eddie ran his hand through his hair and muttered, ‘Eh, lad, what trouble have you caused now?’

In the doorway of the farmhouse, Bertha smiled.

‘I have my reasons.’

‘What? What reasons?’

‘You don’t need to know.’

‘Yes, Mam, I do.’ Maisie tried to calm the hysteria in her tone. She was trying very hard to act like an adult. ‘I know I’m not a grown-up yet, but I’m not a child
any longer either. Why can’t you trust me?’

‘Trust you? Trust you? When you do what you’ve done today? Deliberately disobeyed me and deceived me. How do you expect me to trust you after that?’

‘Because I can’t see why I have to stay shut away from leading a normal life unless you tell me why.’

Anna sat down heavily at the table and laid her head on her arms. She groaned. She was tired, very tired. All the long years of loneliness, the constant fear, which despite the passage of time
seemed as sharp as ever. Bringing up Maisie alone with only Eddie and Pat Jessop to turn to for help. And living in the isolated cottage with none of the amenities that most people now enjoyed. It
hadn’t seemed so bad at first, when Maisie was tiny, but now she was forced to acknowledge the unfairness of their life for her daughter. It was one thing for Anna to choose to hide herself
away. It was quite another for her to inflict that same seclusion on the young girl.

Her voice trembling, Maisie said, ‘I’m sorry, Mam. I – I promise I won’t do anything again. At least – not without telling you. But will
you
promise
me
something?’

Anna lifted her head slowly. ‘Depends what it is,’ she said guardedly.

Maisie licked her lips. ‘Well, if I promise to tell you exactly where I’m going, who with and what time I’ll be home, will you let me go out a bit more? I’m not asking to
be out every night, not even every week. I’ve got my school work to do, specially now I’m in the Lower Sixth.’ Then the words came tumbling out in a rush of confidence. ‘Mam
– I – I want to go to teacher-training college.’

‘I can’t afford—’ Anna began, but Maisie interrupted eagerly.

‘You don’t have to. There’s grants and things we can apply for. The careers teacher said so. And I do so want to be a teacher. The little ones, you know. At a village school
like the one I went to here.’ She reached across and gripped her mother’s hands. ‘Please try to understand, Mam.’

‘We ought to go away. Get as far away as possible,’ Anna murmured. ‘We should have gone years ago, but . . .’

‘Why, Mam? What is it you’re so afraid of?’

Anna pressed her lips together and shook her head. ‘I can’t tell you,’ she said huskily. ‘Please don’t ask me.’ Then hesitantly she said, ‘All right. If
you do your best to keep your promise, you can go out now and again. But if you want to go to teacher-training college, you’ll have to work hard at school.’

‘That’s why I wanted to stay on and do A levels.’

Maisie could have left school long before now, but Anna had agreed to her staying on into the sixth form.

It had been her way of ensuring that Maisie was at home for another two years.

As if reading her thoughts, Maisie said, ‘And even then I needn’t go very far away. There’s a very good teacher-training college at Lincoln—’

Anna sprang to her feet. ‘
No
,
no
,’ she shouted. ‘You’ll not go there. Anywhere but there. Anywhere.’

Maisie gaped at her. ‘All right, Mam. All right. There’s another year before I have to decide anyway—’

‘Get to bed. It’s very late. I’ll never be up in the morning.’

Submissively, Maisie got up, kissed her mother’s cheek and then climbed the ladder to her room, still shocked by her mother’s reaction to the mention of the college in Lincoln.

Maisie fell asleep almost at once, but in the other bedroom Anna lay awake until the first fingers of dawn crept in through the window.

‘Everything all right?’ Eddie asked.

‘Sort of,’ Anna replied guardedly and then allowed herself a wry smile. ‘You?’

‘Bertha’s giving Tony a hard time. She hit him. First time I’ve ever seen her go for him.’ There was wonder in his tone.

‘Oh, Eddie, I’m sorry.’

Eddie shrugged. ‘Not your fault, lass.’

‘No, but it is Maisie’s.’

‘Not really. It seems it was Tony who suggested the trip.’

‘Yes, but it was for Maisie, wasn’t it?’ Anna insisted.

‘Well, yes.’ Eddie was obliged to agree.

‘Has she hurt him?’

‘Who?’

‘Tony? Has Bertha hurt him?’

Eddie laughed. ‘Oh that. No.’ He chuckled. ‘You should have seen it, lass. He’s a strong lad, you know, and whilst I’ve never stood up to her – ’ he
wrinkled his brow and rubbed his nose – ‘never thought about it, really. But he just caught hold of her wrists and held her. She was screaming like a banshee, but she couldn’t
move. And he held her like that till she calmed down. He told her, quite calmly, that he was a grown man and that he’d do what he liked and that it was nothing to do with her. I don’t
reckon she’ll tangle with him again in a hurry.’

Eddie said no more. He did not want to tell Anna about the rest of the row that had gone on in the farmhouse the previous night.

‘You’ll keep away from that little slut,’ Bertha had screamed at her son. ‘You’ll have the law on you, if you don’t. You could be put in prison.’

‘She’s sixteen. Old enough,’ Tony had goaded her.

‘Don’t you understand?’ Bertha had screeched. ‘She’s your sister.’

‘That’s what you say.’ He nodded across to where Eddie was standing in the corner of the room. ‘But me dad ses different. And he should know.’

‘He’d deny it. Course he would. I’m surprised that trollop over the hill hasn’t had a brood of his bastards by now. All men are the same.’

‘No, we’re not, Mam.’ Tony’s voice was gentle. Now he was older he understood more about his parents’ unhappy marriage, though there was nothing he could do about
it. A few years earlier Eddie had explained to him about Bertha’s father, about his philandering and his lawless ways that had finally landed him in prison. ‘We’ve just got news
that he’s died in there,’ Eddie had said, ‘but it won’t alter how ya mam feels about him and how it’s twisted her view of all men. It’s something you’ll
have to cope with, lad, as you get older. You’re all she’s ever had to pour her love into and it’s going to be hard for you.’

And now Tony was facing his mother’s warped reasoning. ‘We’re not all the same, mam. There’s nowt between me and Maisie, I promise you.’

He had not added that he wished with all his heart that there could be. But always there was the spectre of their relationship hanging over him. Just which of his parents was telling him the
truth?

He wanted to believe Eddie, but dare he?

‘Well, I’m truly sorry,’ Anna said now, dragging Eddie’s thoughts back from the previous night.

‘No harm done, lass,’ Eddie said, managing to lie cheerfully and convincingly. ‘No harm done.’

That evening, thirty miles away in a terraced house in Lincoln, the big man dressed like Max Miller sat staring at a picture in the local paper. ‘Damn,’ he
muttered. ‘They haven’t printed the picture I hoped they would. They’ve put one in of the audience arriving.’

‘What are you on about, Dad?’ The younger man stood in front of the mirror over the fireplace, combing his hair into an Elvis Presley look-alike style.

The older man smiled. ‘Good job I thought to call at the
Echo
offices and get the originals of all the photos taken that night, wasn’t it?’

‘Whatever do you want them for?’

‘I’ll show you,’ the man answered as he pulled several black and white photographs from an envelope and sorted though them. ‘Come and look at this.’

‘I’m off out. Can’t it wait? I’m meeting someone.’ He was dressed in a bright pink Teddy boy suit with a bootlace tie and crepe-soled shoes.

His father glanced at him. ‘Bit old for dressing like that now, aren’t you?’

‘Huh,’ the other laughed. ‘You’re a fine one to talk. Always dressed like something from an old music hall bill.’

‘Well, that’s me job, son. Got to look the part of the theatre promoter, now ain’t I?’

‘All right. What is it?’

‘Here, look at that. Remind you of anyone?’ He jabbed at one of the pictures with his forefinger. ‘Her. That girl there.’

His son stared at the photograph. He glanced at his father and then his gaze went to a faded photograph on the mantelpiece of himself as a child of about twelve. He looked again at the newspaper
picture as the older man said softly, ‘She’s got bright red hair, an’ all.
Just like you.
’

They stared at each other. ‘Could it be?’ the son asked.

‘It’s possible.’ He pointed again at the paper. ‘And do you see what her name is? Maisie. Now that’s a bit like May, isn’t it?’

The younger man nodded. ‘What are you going to do?’

The big man heaved himself out of his chair. ‘A bit of detective work first. Then we’ll see. Oh yes, we’ll see all right then.’

The two men grinned at each other.

If Anna had known what was happening in that terraced house in the city, she would have packed their things immediately and fled for her life.

Two men in a red sports car drove into the yard at Cackle Hill Farm, scattering hens and sending up a spray of slurry. The big man unwound himself from the seat and the younger
man jumped out agilely. They looked around them.

‘Hello there,’ the big man’s voice boomed. ‘Anyone at home?’

The yard was deserted, except for the hens and three geese that waddled away quickly. ‘Knock on the door,’ the older man suggested and his son strode towards the back door of the
house and rapped sharply.

A moment passed and then the door opened framing the ample figure of the farmer’s wife. Visitors to the farm were rare and Bertha eyed them with suspicion. ‘What d’you
want?’

The older man moved closer and doffed his trilby with an exaggerated show of courtesy. He fingered his moustache. ‘Good day to you, ma’am.’

The younger man too made a little bow towards her, though shrewdly Bertha felt it was all an act. An act to charm her. Well, there was no man living who could charm Bertha Appleyard.

She began to close the door. ‘Not today, thank you.’

‘Oh now, wait a minute, love,’ the older of the two began and even had the temerity to put his foot in the door. Bertha glared at him and opened the door wider, intending to slam it
against his foot. Guessing her intention, he withdrew his foot hastily. Instead, he put up his hand, palm outwards as if to defend himself. ‘Wait minute, Missis. Not so hasty. We only want to
ask you a few questions. We reckon you can help us.’

Intrigued in spite of herself, Bertha wavered. ‘Go on.’

‘We’re looking for someone. A girl. Well’ – he glanced sideways at his companion – ‘she’d be a young woman now. And she’d probably have a
youngster. Anna. That’s her name. Anna Milton. Do you know anyone living hereabouts with that name?’