The Corner House (16 page)

‘I know you’ll be homesick,’ sighed Eva.

‘We will that.’

‘But what’s most important, Bernard? Katherine or stopping in Bolton?’

‘Katherine.’ He doted on his daughter. And she was his daughter, no matter who had fathered her in the merely physical sense.

‘See, I got thinking when my Sam passed on.’ Eva dabbed at her face with one of her dead husband’s handkerchiefs. ‘Life and death – it’s all the same, like a circle, all part of whatever we’re put here for. I couldn’t leave things as they were. The truth’s the truth. I had to pass it on before my turn comes.’

Bernard gazed at her. ‘Are you ill?’

‘No.’

He continued to stare hard at his companion. The small woman’s world was falling apart, it seemed. ‘All you need now is a Labour government, and that’d be you out on your ear. Would there be work for you?’

Eva raised a shoulder. ‘I’ll find summat,’ she replied. ‘Trust you to go worrying over somebody else. Too saintly for your own good, you are. Just you mind yourself and Liz and Katherine.’

Bernard waited until a group of clog-shod mill-workers had dashed homeward through the market. ‘If there’s anything I can do for you, please ask.’

‘I will.’ She would, too. Bernard and Danny Walsh were rare folk, because they didn’t like to watch others suffering. ‘You’ll mind what I’ve said today, Bernard?’

‘Yes.’

She turned away and sniffed the air. ‘More snow, I shouldn’t wonder.’

Bernard reached out and touched her arm. ‘Eva? You know our Danny’s set against letting Pauline visit Theresa and Jessica?’

She shook her head. ‘That’s news to me.’

He sighed, sending a plume of cloudy breath into the air. ‘I reckon our Danny knows about the two girls being twins. Pauline was saying that he’d told her to stay away from the TB sanatorium. It’s not germs he’s worried about, is it?’

Eva clicked her tongue. ‘Nay, lad, I wouldn’t have a clue. Happen you’d best tell him anyway. Because he’ll want to know why you’re moving – if you do move.’

‘There’s not much choice, is there?’ replied Bernard. ‘I mean, we could stop up Bromley Cross, buy another house, but what if the girls met in town a few years from now?’

Eva’s thoughts had travelled beyond Bernard’s. ‘There’s more to it than that,’ she said. ‘A lot more. They’re sisters. They were born to the same mam on the same day. When all’s said and done, them two lasses have a right to be together.’

Bernard thought that his heart would stop.

‘Now calm yourself,’ chided Eva. ‘I’m not going to start any wars, or I wouldn’t have told you to get out of Bolton. What I’m saying is that eventually, when they’re grown up, like, there might come a time for them to be told.’

He swallowed painfully.

‘They’re blood, Bernard. At the end of the day, they’re as near to one another as they can be without being Siamese. Shared a womb, they did. Some folk say they hold hands, you know, touch one another’s
faces, play about and kick before they’re even born. It’s a God-given gift and—’

‘Stop it, Eva.’ Bernard found himself trembling again. ‘Don’t try to make me feel even more guilty, please.’

She pulled herself up to full height. ‘I’m guilty, not you. I separated them, because I realized that Theresa Nolan could hardly manage one, let alone twins. Like I said before, I never even thought, not proper, like. You just need to know everything, Bernard. Knowing makes you more … It makes you fit for whatever happens.’

‘I thought … I even hoped that the mother had died. Or that Katherine came from a family with a dozen children and not a pair of boots between them. It was easier to think along them lines, I suppose.’

She inclined her head. ‘But it’s not so easy now, eh?’

‘No.’

Eva wondered why she had told this poor man the truth. Had she been trying to ease her own burden by passing half of it to him? None of this was Bernard Walsh’s fault. He had seen his wife keening silently, inwardly, dangerously, for a dead child, had watched Liz crumbling, falling into that dark, formless place halfway between sanity and madness. ‘I had to do this,’ Eva told him. ‘There’s the chance of Theresa noticing, of others seeing how alike the kiddies are. The girls themselves might meet one day by accident. I had to tell you,’ she repeated, as if underlining her decision would prove its correctness. ‘As for the rest of it – them being twins – well, that’s just my guilt talking.’

‘Go home, love,’ he said. ‘You must be frozen.’

She touched his arm, then walked away.

Bernard perched on the edge of an empty stall’s counter. Katherine had a sister. Little Jessica Nolan was Katherine’s twin. This hadn’t happened suddenly – the girls were five years old and they had always been related. But fear wrapped its tentacles around Bernard’s heart because he had new knowledge. In this particular case, that knowledge decreased its owner’s power. This was the famous exception which might prove the rule.

The Merchants’ Club Inn was an unprepossessing piece of architecture. It was flanked by education offices and a notorious public lavatory around which dark-clad men hovered in the hope of meeting fellow members of their often taunted minority.

Inside the tradesmen’s club, members of a more acceptable society enjoyed the privileges accompanying stamped and paid-for membership cards. Travelling businessmen could buy a bed for the night, while Bolton traders were often to be found negotiating deals, entertaining prospective clients, or simply reaching a state of inebriation that allowed them to forget or ignore their various positions in life.

The interior of this exclusive club was not beautiful. Shoddy plasterwork and squeaking floorboards had been garnished in glory – wood panelling, red carpets, shiny-topped tables and maroon curtains. A small bar occupied one corner of the meeting room and, at the opposite end, dartboard and billiard table offered cheap recreation to anyone with a modicum of energy.

Three men hung over a table in the quiet room, each staring into his drink as if searching for a
spiritual hand to reach out from within the soul of alcohol to offer guidance. Drooping shoulders and bowed heads made the group an ideal subject for any passing impressionist who might have cared to capture the essence of depression.

‘What a bloody mess life is. I can’t cope with this any more,’ mumbled a pale-skinned, well-spoken man in a very decent suit. He was referring not only to Theresa Nolan, but also to other areas of his life. ‘We must continue to pay, and to pay more. After what our sons did, there can be no question of neglecting the woman and her child.’

When the statement bore no fruit, George Hardman settled back and gazed once more into a pint of bitter beer. He had meant what he had just said. More than ever before, he pitied Theresa Nolan, but his own existence was about to alter so radically that he had little energy and little real interest in lives other than his own. Theresa was just one of many last straws heaped on his aching back. ‘Things must change,’ he added in a whisper.

Maurice Chorlton clicked his tongue. ‘Yes, I suppose you have too much to lose by refusing to pay, as have I,’ he advised George Hardman. Hardman’s Hides, which had been in the family for almost a century, was a thriving business even now, before the cessation of hostilities. ‘Once the war’s over, you’ll be back on your feet properly,’ added the jeweller. ‘And with young Ged to help you.’ Roy, too, would be coming home. Roy Chorlton’s interest in the art of jewellery manufacture was practically non-existent.

The third man, Alan Betteridge, chuckled softly. ‘You’d think this were the bloody dark ages,’ he told his companions. ‘Who cares, eh? Our sons had their
wicked way with a girl – so what? So bloody what? She can sod off. How would she manage in court, eh? If she sued, she’d be laughed at after all these years.’

‘Morality, not legalities,’ said George Hardman softly. ‘Put up and shut up, that’s my advice to you, Alan.’

Maurice sighed, inflating his rounded stomach until the buttons on his waistcoat all but screamed for mercy. He leaned forward, causing further stress to his clothing. ‘There is yet another form of proof, Alan.’ He still didn’t care much for Alan Betteridge, was inclined to dislike a man so crude, so common. ‘As well as Bernard Walsh’s statement, that is. My son offered to marry the girl, remember? Years back, when the lads were still in training, he went to see her.’

‘Daft sod, that one of yours,’ spat Betteridge. ‘No bloody guts and no sense.’

Maurice glared at the so-called fine furnisher of homes. ‘And Eva Harris was a witness to that – well, she says she was. She was the one who told me about the stupid proposal. I felt like killing him, but you have to admit, there’s no denying the truth now. Anyway, my business depends on good will. I can’t have Bolton running off to Manchester for its wedding rings just because one of our lads fathered a bastard.’ Once again, he singled out Alan Betteridge. ‘And there’s bigger fish than you in the cities, too.’

‘Don’t talk to me about fish,’ snapped Betteridge. ‘Them bloody Walshes are at the back of Eva Harris, you know.’

‘Nobody’s forced to buy their chairs and tables from you,’ continued Maurice, ‘I reckon there’ll be all sorts of changes once the black-outs are over.
Folk’ll want new stuff. They’ll be chucking out all sorts just to be rid of all the junk they’ve sat amongst during air raids. You stand to make a fortune when Utility stops sticking its stamp on matchwood. So forget about the Walshes and the Nolans of this world. I say we pay up again. The Harris woman’s on the warpath, because the Nolans are both in poor health up at the TB sanatorium.’ He glanced now at the tanner. ‘Well?’

George Hardman raised his hands in a gesture of hopelessness. ‘Please yourselves,’ he said. ‘Because I won’t be here for much longer.’ He attempted a light shrug. ‘It’s nothing to do with the girl, or her child, or our sons. As I said before, everything must change.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I’ve had about as much as I can take. I intend to make my exit from the scene at the earliest opportunity.’

The other two stared closely at George Hardman. ‘You what?’ asked Alan Betteridge.

George let out a deep, heartfelt sigh. ‘Look,’ he said with exaggerated patience. ‘For a start, there’s Lily.’ He pursed his lips, as if the sound of his wife’s name had left a bitter taste in its wake.

‘What about her?’ asked Alan Betteridge.

‘She’s been at it again.’

Maurice Chorlton kept his composure, while Alan Betteridge leaned forward like a hungry animal expecting scraps from some medieval banquet.

George Hardman ran long, thin fingers through a thatch that had been grey for over twenty years. A tall, slender man, he carried himself with an elegance that had never visited the other two tradesmen. ‘My head went white within twelve months of marrying Lillian,’ he stated bluntly. ‘I don’t even know if Ged is my son.’

‘Who’s she messed with this time?’ persisted Betteridge.

George Hardman cleared his throat. He had nothing to lose, he informed himself firmly. His wife was a tramp and the truth would come out eventually. ‘Her
pièce de résistance
,’ he announced, the words trimmed with damped-down anger, ‘is our vicar.’ He shook his head sadly. ‘Man of God, shepherd of a parish, bringer of the word and an ugly beggar if ever I saw one.’

It was an unwritten rule at Merchants’ that no-one ever laughed at George Hardman. His wife might be a nymphomaniac, while his son wasn’t much to write home about, yet George Hardman stood head and shoulders above every man in the club. But Alan Betteridge, the balance of whose chair had slipped during recent moments, fell underneath the table, his laugh almost loud enough to shatter glassware.

Maurice Chorlton, unable to bear public embarrassment, was glad that the club was almost empty. He dragged the man off the floor, righted the chair and thrust the drunken Alan Betteridge back into his seat. ‘Shut up,’ he muttered.

Betteridge groaned with the pain of suppressed glee, then banged his head on the table rather sharply. Pictures of Lily Hardman and a man of the cloth played naughtily across his small, active mind. ‘I’m all right now,’ he announced through tears and sobs produced by near-hysteria. He was seeing stars, and Lily Hardman continued to dance behind lights produced by near-concussion. ‘I’ll have a bloody headache tomorrow,’ he grumbled.

George Hardman appeared not to have noticed anything amiss. ‘She started going to church a lot.
Good, I thought. Perhaps she’s mending her ways, I thought. But she wasn’t mending her ways. She was mending hymn books in the vestry while he looked at her.’ He paused for a couple of seconds. ‘Last summer, it was. Her sister called unexpectedly, so I went to fetch Lily from church.’

Alan Betteridge blinked twice, suspense etched into his features.

Maurice Chorlton slipped a hand into his pocket and brought forth a silver hip flask. Deftly, he poured whisky into a tumbler, then passed the drink to George.

The tanner drank, grimaced against the cheap Scotch, yet claimed a refill. When the second drink had disappeared, he continued. ‘She was on a high stool in front of a pile of Books of Common Prayer, blouse undone to the waist. The reverend was behind her, left hand on her bosom and the right one attending to other business.’

‘What did you do?’ breathed Alan Betteridge.

‘I battered the living daylights out of him.’ George Hardman’s voice remained steady. ‘Then I … well … I suppose I clouted my own wife, gave her a couple of black eyes and a very thick ear. She had to stay in the house for ten days.’

‘You hit her in front of the vicar?’ asked Maurice Chorlton.

‘Oh yes. Even if the bishop had turned up, I would have acted in the same disgusting way. I was so bloody furious.’ He paused, nodding. ‘You know, I even felt like raping her. I was suddenly a savage. Rape’s nothing to do with sex,’ he advised his companions. ‘It’s power. It’s devaluing somebody’s currency, lessening their worth. That’s what our sons did to that young woman. It was a terrible crime, and
I should know, because I could easily have been as guilty as they are.’

‘Nay,’ said Betteridge. ‘That were different. Lily’s your wife. You would have been claiming your rights.’