Ruby Flynn (12 page)

Charles flicked a shilling his way as he passed and the boy leapt up to catch it.

‘Thanks mister,’ he shouted, with a look of amazement on his face. ‘Ta for the bob. Don’t you want yer shoes cleaned then?’

Charles held up his hand in recognition of the thanks and smiled at the boy’s enthusiasm as he walked away and disappeared into the fog.

Charles had fallen for Liverpool the moment he set foot on the dockside. The people and the vibrancy of the city, war-damaged but pushing slowly towards recovery, captivated his imagination. He could smell prosperity on the Mersey air, a means to increase the fortune he had been left for the benefit of his yet-to-be-born sons. He had even loved the humorous cheekiness of people like the shoeshine boys, always in the same place on Exchange Flags.

Tonight, the fog was everywhere. It rolled down the Mersey River like a bolt of unfurling grey chiffon and tumbled over the edge of the riverbank. It hung around on the decks of boats and crawled across the docks and up the streets into the city. It cowered in doorways and squatted on street lamps, dulling the yellow sulphur light to an eerie blur. It filled the air and the lungs of babies and children and it stalked the easy prey of the old into their badly heated homes.

‘It’s a right pea-souper tonight, sir,’ the boy shouted, even though Charles was lost to the fog.

Earlier that evening, Mrs Bat had almost delayed Charles by retiring much later than usual.

‘I will bring you your tea tray at six, then,’ she said, in her usual surly manner, as she deposited his dinner on the table with a thud so hard that the dinner plate leapt up from the tray and rattled as it landed, sending his watery gravy slopping over the edge.

‘And I will put your breakfast with it, although what any God-fearing person can eat before mass, I have no idea.’ She fussed and fiddled about the room, as though sensing his impatience and deliberately delaying her departure.

As soon as she had left, he bolted down his supper and made his way to his secret room on the top floor, the room to which only he and no one else held a key. There he changed his clothes for those he was now wearing. He sat on a wooden chest and waited until the housekeeper closed the scullery door and descended the rear steps. Once he had heard the latch fall on the wooden gate, he followed her out into the unlit back entry.

If Charles had simply needed company tonight, he could have taken himself to London and spent a few nights at his club. He would have met friends for dinner and found any number of young ladies willing to supply what he was looking for. It always amazed him how much easier it was to persuade the daughter of a duke to bend to his will than it was the daughter of a docker. The dockers’ daughters were riddled with guilt and the fear of shame. They went to church, believed the priest and trembled at the thought of confession.

‘I can’t,’ the last one had whispered. ‘Me mam says that if I darken our doorstep, me da will kill me.’ Charles knew she was referring to becoming pregnant.

Charles had considered taking a mistress and keeping her in London, but he realized that wasn’t for him. Charles adored the dockers’ daughters, these Liverpool girls most of all. He thought that they were more like Americans than any others he had ever met. Not so strange, given that Liverpool faced out across the Atlantic towards America, turning its back on England. He loved their irreverence, their soft skin and a willing lust for life to match his own, but mostly he loved the fact that they allowed him to release his pain.

He knew of no other way to cure the hurt, except by burying himself in the scent of an unknown woman. It worked. For a short time afterwards, he could concentrate, think and be free from the pain that haunted him and which without fail or warning, always returned. Not one of his Liverpool conquests knew his true identity and that was how it would remain. He genuinely loved the girls he met, for the time he was with them. He envied their simple, uncomplicated lives and the feeling of power and pleasure it gave him to hand them money, then watch their faces light up. Their lives were so unlike his own. They couldn’t ever know who he truly was. The lord of a castle. A man who detested his own life. His life was a lie and he knew it, but at least his Liverpool girls prevented him from falling into a pit of loneliness and despair.

But his thoughts tonight were full of one particular Liverpool lady, Stella. That he had remembered her name after their first night was a feat in itself. Usually he forgot a girl’s name before her French knickers returned to full mast. Stella made him laugh. To be fair, all Liverpool girls made him laugh. Brought about by a lack of a social filter, or an awareness that there are things one just shouldn’t say or do.

Stella had set her eye on Charles from the moment he walked into the bar. He knew instantly that bedding her would be dangerous. There was something about her that set alarm bells ringing and told him to be careful, but at the same time he wanted to know her more.

She was a virgin, and the discovery had come as a surprise to him. He remembered every second of the first time he had taken her. At the thought of her sweetness, of her desperate eagerness to please and accommodate him, his stomach clenched. He had hardly fumbled with her blouse before she reached up and undid it for him. His impression had been of one who was skilled, until he felt her violently tremble in his arms.

‘Is there something wrong,’ he had whispered thickly into her hair.

‘No not wrong, it’s just that it’s me first time and I want to get it right. Will it hurt?’

Charles was thrown: he wrapped his arms around her to stop the shaking, while he gathered his thoughts for a moment and wondered what to do.

She decided for him by placing her mouth over his and his hand inside the blouse she had opened. When he tried to pull away to speak, to make sure that this was what she really wanted, she put her hands around the back of his neck, pulling him to her, kissing him harder as he heard her first gentle moans.

He wished they were somewhere else. He didn’t want this girl to remember her first time in a back entry, but it was too late. She had won, he was lost and as he entered her, as gently as he could, she shuddered and contracted, drawing him in. He held his breath and steadied himself; savouring the moment, relishing the dizziness in his head and the oblivion it brought. He bent his head and kissed the curve of her breast, inhaling the scent of her, holding on. He took her nipple into his mouth. Instantly, he felt her respond once more as she rose against him. Stella was hungry for life. He could hold himself back no longer and succumbed to the pleasure of release she gave him.

It was not his usual style, but he waited with her and they shared a cigarette before he left.

Not one of the Liverpool girls he had met before had been as willing, as hungry or as exuberant as Stella. She amused him, pulled him into her world of optimism with her talkativeness and her funny accent. He knew where he could find her, if he wanted. He knew. And it nagged at him. As he walked through the back alleys he wondered what Stella, the Liverpool girl about town, would make of the Ballyford pigs.

‘I never knew that pig farming was such an attractive proposition to so many beautiful young women,’ a friend from university had said to Charles, with a hint of sarcasm, during the days when life was good.

Charles had laughed out loud as his friend continued. ‘No, indeed, it is a fact that every beautiful woman is fascinated by the price of wheat and bacon, adores fishing and has always wanted to visit rural Ireland. I wonder what it is that attracts them to the incredibly wealthy and landed Lord FitzDeane.’

That comment had hurt.

As Charles turned onto Tithebarn Street he thought about Rory, a man who knew all about pigs. He remembered how Rory had taken Charles under his wing at Ballyford during the long periods of loneliness when his parents were away. It was Rory who had always landed Charles in trouble with Mrs McKinnon when they were boys.

‘You spend too much time down at the cottages my boy, you need to keep away from that Rory. All the Doyles are a bad lot,’ she had often chided him when he was younger.

She was right. But he had hung around with the servants and Rory Doyle because he was a lonely boy in need of friends. His parents spent most of their time in London and he had been raised at Ballyford by Mr and Mrs McKinnon. As far as he could remember, he had never once sat on his mother’s knee and the only affection he could ever recall had come from the Ballyford servants. Sheets washed, floors scrubbed, brow kissed.

All in the line of duty, and Rory Doyle, well he was a hero in Charles’s eyes. Tall, older and with deep, dark Irish eyes, which flared with daring, it was Rory Doyle who taught Charles to ride and sat with him on the side of the river at Ballyford and told him tales of the people who lived in the cottages. But suddenly, without warning and when Charles still a boy, Rory had disappeared from Ballyford overnight and hadn’t returned until the morning of the wake for Charles’s father, years later.

Now they were both men. Rory, in his late forties, made Charles feel, at thirty-three, as if he was still a young man. Charles regarded Rory almost as family. He knew him, liked him and more than that, he trusted him, too.

He wondered, not for the first time, why Rory had left Ballyford so suddenly. But none of that mattered now. They were working as a team, united by the
Marianna
and the new shipping business.

They had met that lunchtime in the new office and their recently appointed assistant had made them fancy sandwiches and a pot of tea. Rory’s desk faced out over the Mersey and for a few moments they had sat and watched the
Royal Iris
as she loaded her passengers and the dredger, making its steady way across to Birkenhead. Rory was keen.

‘Sure, I can do it,’ he said enthusiastically, when Charles asked him could he manage the company whilst he went home to Ballyford. ‘My lad is virtually running the salvage business, and why wouldn’t I want to help my Lord Charles?’ Rory winked to dispel any notion that he was being facetious.

It worked. It always did. Charles had no idea how much Rory loathed the FitzDeanes. If he had any notion that Rory had spent his life winning his trust and favour, while all the time despising him, he would have been shocked to his core. Rory Doyle was a charmer who used people with ease and without conscience.

‘Are you still a rouge on the tables, Rory?’ Charles asked, sheepishly. Like everyone else, he had heard the tales of Rory’s gambling.

‘Well, let’s put it this way, shall we…’ Rory crushed his cigarette into the ashtray with exaggerated force and picked up and examined an egg sandwich. He began to pull the threads of mustard cress away from the sides. ‘When I gamble, ’tis only with me own money, not anyone else’s, so I’m thinking that would be legal now and classed as me own enjoyment.’ His smile belied the bristling edge to his voice.

Charles laughed out loud. ‘That’s fine. It’s none of my business what you do with your own money, Rory. I’m not prying. Just showing concern, that’s all. I had a reason for asking: would you like to become a full partner in the business?’ Charles asked this question out of the blue. He could see he had irritated Rory with his question about gambling and wanted to make it up to him. Without his being aware, it had been the cycle of their friendship since their boyhood days.

‘I need someone who can give the business their all. Work seven days a week, if necessary, to make the
Marianna
a success. If there is one thing you know, it’s shipping.’

Rory thought for a moment. Even he hadn’t expected this. He knew he had to pick his words carefully and took a bite of his sandwich to buy himself some time.

‘I will give it my all, lord Charles,’ he said, sombrely and without enthusiasm. ‘You know I will do that anyway, you don’t have to make me a partner, you know.’

‘No, I want to, you deserve it. I can’t expect you to put the work in and not take the rewards. I want to pay you as an equal in the business,’ said Charles with full enthusiasm and an almost pleading voice.

It worked. Rory smiled.

Charles was in the middle of developing his plans to expand the Ballyford holdings and in that year, Rory had taught Charles most of what he knew about shipping. It was reassuring for Charles to have someone older lending a helping hand. Rory was rough around the edges, but skilled and competent. What let him down was that his eye was always on the bigger prize. The one he could attain with lady luck and no effort from himself. Greed was his vice and on occasion it had nearly taken him down. But Charles had found himself leaving more and more of the day-to-day running of the business to Rory. It had been the same when they were kids. Although Charles had been the heir to the castle, it was Rory who lorded it around the estate.

Tomorrow morning, Charles would set off for Ballyford on the first boat and leave Rory in charge of tying up the remaining loose ends of the deal.

‘Thank God for Rory,’
Charles said out loud, as he hurried along into the foggy night. If it weren’t for him, a trip back to Ballyford at this crucial stage of the process would have been out of the question. Charles had sworn that, when he married, he would never leave Ballyford and now here he was deepening his business interests in England and Ballyford was the place he dreaded visiting more than anywhere else in the world.

Tonight, however, he knew exactly what he had to do. He had abandoned his suit and bowler hat, the uniform for men of business in Liverpool and wore shabby trousers and a worker’s donkey jacket. His brown brogues were down on the heel and he had placed a workman’s cap on his head.

The clothes had been the most difficult part of his deceit. Unable to give this task to any servant, he had visited a pawnshop himself and pretended he was buying the clothes as an act of charity for a lady from the church.

He was shocked at the bluntness of the woman behind the counter.

‘Are you sure those trousers aren’t for you?’ she asked him, with narrow eyes. ‘It’s just that yer awful particular like about whether they fits yer or not. How d’ya know he’s the same size as you? You just told me you never met ’im.’