The Corner House (27 page)

The nearer she came to him, the more slowly her heart seemed to beat. Surely the opposite should be happening?

‘I love you, Theresa,’ he said. ‘And if you want me to bite back those words, I can’t, because they’re said, they’ve floated off to wherever words go when they’re done with.’

The man was a piece of pure magic. ‘I think I love you, too,’ said Theresa Nolan. She thought she loved him? Thought? She knew, understood, though emotion had little to do with understanding. Love simply happened, came along at the least convenient of times. With the exception of her daughter, Theresa had felt little for anyone.

Beyond help, they entered a world created exclusively for them, a timeless zone where nothing mattered save the pleasing of each other. He buried his face in her hair while she breathed in the scent of his throat, her fingertips seeking the pulse in his neck before allowing her lips to capture his life-beat. Remembering nothing, expecting everything, she lay down with him and gave herself up to a joy she had not expected to experience.

‘Marry me,’ he begged afterwards.

Wrapped in a rough blanket and a layer of passion that threatened to return, Theresa smiled into darkness. She was capable of love. She was able to relate to this one, precious man, yet she must leave him. ‘Not yet,’ she replied. ‘Not just yet.’

He touched her hair. ‘When?’

‘That depends on how much “when” I have left.’

‘I want us both to live for ever.’

In that moment, Theresa came to terms with the true identity of love, its symptoms, its side-effects. Love meant that she did not want to live for ever. Love meant that she needed to die before he did.

She could not, dared not bid him goodbye. Dejected beyond measure, Theresa sat on her lonely bed and watched the heavy sky as it darkened to envelop completely a clump of trees. She had made an arrangement with herself, had decided that she would remain here only if pregnant. Pressing her hands against a firm belly, she felt the warning signs, the dull ache that preceded menstruation. There was no baby, then. Disappointment dashed through her heart, while her brain insisted on rejoicing. Deserting her man was almost as confusing as leaving Jessica behind.

She sighed, leaning back against a pillow harder than concrete. Theresa Nolan, mother, ex-mill worker, ex-maker of meals in a munitions factory, was about to become a not-quite-madam.

She remained on her bed, watching the corridor lights dimming as night approached. After dark, alternate sets of lamps extinguished themselves, leaving sufficient illumination for the patients to walk to and from the bathrooms, not enough for reading or playing cards outside the wards.

Williamson’s was as silent as a graveyard. Her transport to Liverpool was to be parked at the other side of a small wood, the copse she had stared into for almost a whole year. At first light, she would slip out through her window and make for that country road. She could do it; she could run a seaman’s retreat. There was a full staff of domestics to do the heavy work, and the … the other business, the less savoury side of the post would be manageable, she felt sure. Monty, who had left a few days earlier, would be driving the van, would be taking her away from Jessica, from Stephen, from Bolton.

She turned her head to look at the single room which had been her home for such a long time. How she would miss Stephen. She could see him now in her mind’s eye, tousled hair, his never-quite-white coat, a stethoscope that went missing several times a day, his smile, that square, strong jawline. He was her heartbeat, her strength, and she could not stay.

The fingers attached to her handbag stiffened. She could not remain with Stephen, could not risk being dragged back to Williamson’s. But oh, how badly she needed his love, his touch, his scent, the sight of him. It was like being split in two, one half trying to remain with her lover and her daughter,
the other half screaming for vengeance. But oh, how she needed to have her day with those three men. She was going; she was going to prepare.

In Liverpool, she would be near enough and distant enough, ideally placed for the fulfilment of her requirements, the culmination of all those years of thinking, wondering and plotting. Betteridge, Chorlton and Hardman would become lulled into a false sense of security, would believe that their luck had changed, that Theresa Nolan had lost interest, disappeared or died. But before she could punish them she had to make sure her daughter’s future was secure. That must be her first concern.

Jessica must be all right. Eva had taken the savings from Emblem Street, and Theresa would continue to send money for the child’s upkeep. The little girl needed to be safe, must play no part in her mother’s intended actions. ‘I’m a madam,’ whispered Theresa into the thick pall of a winter night. ‘And those three men had better watch out, because I’m coming for them. Madams are tough. I am tough.’ Who on earth was she trying to convince?

The time dragged. Anxious to be alert before breakfast-bearing trolleys began their rattling, Theresa paced the floor, visited the bathroom a dozen times, allowed various scenarios to play their pictures across her mind’s eye. In each drama, she had the upper hand, while three men grovelled across cobbles, clothing torn from their bodies, mouths widened by fear, eyes fixed on the woman whose life they had virtually destroyed.

It was almost morning, surely? On a whim, she pulled a page from a crumpled pad, rooted around for a pencil, then repaired once more to the ladies’
in search of ample light. After chewing absently on wood for several seconds, she wrote her message.

Dearest Stephen,

Please believe that I love you. But I couldn’t stay. When you said another year, it nearly killed me on the spot. It’s hell here, especially for somebody like me, because I don’t know how much time I have left to live.

I want to thank you for all your help, for your care and understanding. I have become [she chewed the pencil again] very fond of you and I know you like me. Stephen, I cannot stay in the same place as you, because I need you and would never leave your side. You might lose your job because of me. But I will miss you so very much. There aren’t enough words to say how I feel, but life without you is going to be far from easy. I’ve got things to do, things I can’t write down. I could die in here, you see. I could die without seeing to certain matters first.

Please look after yourself and don’t send anybody to look for me. I’m going a long way away from Bolton. Jessica will be staying with Eva. I’d be grateful if you would keep in touch with Eva, just to make sure that my daughter is all right.

She folded the paper and addressed it to Dr Stephen Blake before pinning it to a staff noticeboard. It was time. With a heart labouring beneath the onus of mixed emotions, Theresa Nolan walked out of prison and into a silent, frost-crisped dawn. Sliding across icy grasses, the escapee made for the woods
and the road, stopping only when an owl swooped down into the blackened fingers of a skeletal tree. She was as free as a bird. Or was she?

It was a massive house, three-storeyed and built of sandstone, big enough to be a school, thought Theresa as Monty, taciturn as ever, swept his vehicle along a pebbled, semi-circular path. Neat gardens fronted the hostel, clean lawns punctuated by beds filled with dormant rose bushes. Across the road, gilt-tipped iron railings, proud survivors of the wartime purloining of metals, edged a public lawn which, in turn, ran parallel with a beach and the rather choppy estuary.

‘Some of them fell into the sea.’

Startled by the driver’s voice, Theresa awarded him a nervous smile. After forty-odd miles of virtual silence, she had not expected him to be forthcoming once their destination had been achieved. Monty was famous for his silences. His accent was strange, while the particular damage he inflicted on the King’s English was of a sort she had not encountered before meeting Monty. His breed of slang came from Liverpool. But she was used to him and he could be her touchstone. ‘What fell into the sea?’ she asked.

‘Houses, like. Rich Blundellsands buggers kept finding bits of their back kitchens under water, so they had to move away. Sea’s eating land here.’

‘Oh.’

‘They’re holding it back, but King Canute never managed it, did he? I can’t see Liverpool doing what nobody’s never done before. River Alt, you see.’

‘Oh.’

He was warming to his subject. ‘River Alt started rubbing up and down the front, so the houses were
all collapsing in big heaps. You’ve got your Mersey, your Alt and your Irish Sea, three waterways battering away and trying to be boss.’ He grinned. ‘How are the mighty fallen, eh? Into the bloody drink, too, loads of big businessmen and doctors.’

She smiled again.

Monty Sexton studied his companion as if assessing her for the first time. She wasn’t one of the so-called educated, but she had dignity, a kind of classiness, a suspicion of innocence in those large eyes. He suddenly wished he had not brought her. ‘Hey, love, do you know what you’re taking on?’

She nodded. ‘You told me often enough.’

‘It might not be as easy as I made out. This seamen’s shelter is all right. Thirty-two years I was a merchant man, and I’ve lived in one of the attics for a lot of years now. I’ve got a funny neck, so I retired early and I do odd jobs. Downstairs is dead straight, like, reading rooms, billiards, bar, dining room and all that. Now, the upstairs is a different pot of porridge altogether. Everybody knows it’s there, but no bugger talks about it. Right?’

She nodded again.

He pointed. ‘Ground floor’s where the lads come, but they’re not really lads as such – some of them’s in their nineties. They have a nosh and a natter, game of cards, go home, you know the score.’ His finger moved upwards. ‘Them three attics in the roof is mine and storage. Top floor under me’s a couple of big rooms for parties and meetings on one side, then the business is on the other side. Six little rooms, but there’s never been more than four or five girls. Some of them are all right, but there’s a couple of them could scald the lugs off a docker with their language. You have to shut your ears.’

Theresa swallowed.

‘First floor’s bedrooms for old sailors with nowhere to live. They come and go and they pay a bit of rent – I collect that. Your apartment’s there, too, on that floor.’

Theresa nodded. ‘Ground floor for day visitors, first floor for old sailors, second floor is … the girls. Right, I’ve heard and understood, Mr Sexton.’ She gave ‘Mr Sexton’ an encouraging smile. ‘I’ll be all right.’

Out here, in the real world, she looked too nice, too genteel. The so-called board of directors would approve of Theresa. She was a looker, she was the picture of righteousness and she had no family in the area. ‘The police are in on it,’ he reminded her. ‘They know the score and take their cut for staying blind. So, if there’s trouble, they’ll keep you nice and clean as long as you do as your bosses tell you. Not that you’ll be meeting them very often.’

A question hovered and Theresa forced it out. ‘What happened to the housekeeper before me?’

Monty paused. ‘She went off, like. Disappeared. According to the chap who did my job while I was in hospital, she upped sticks and cleared off without saying a word.’

Theresa was dumbstruck for a few moments. ‘Did they search for her?’

Monty shrugged, placed his hands on the steering wheel. ‘What I’m saying, love, is that you have to play the game. It’s no use running to the police if anything happens. Fair weather or foul, the busies turn a blind eye.’

‘If anything happens? What’s going to happen?’

Slowly, Monty Sexton turned and looked his passenger full in the face. ‘The last housekeeper was a
good-looking girl from somewhere outside Dublin. A police chief took a shine to her, wouldn’t have one of the pros instead. He had her beat up, but there was no proof as such. She went moaning to anybody and everybody, threatened to have the chief prosecuted, then she was never seen again, and her belongings went AWOL. The police called round, had a few drinks and a laugh, and that was the end of it. Since her, they’ve had to manage without a housekeeper, because local folk won’t do – they know too much and they have friends and families.’

Theresa felt her heart beating erratically. ‘What about her family?’

‘She was Irish and she never mentioned home.’ This one, too, was disposable, he said inwardly. ‘Can I give you some advice, Theresa?’

‘Please.’

He sniffed. ‘Don’t take offence, queen. Dye your hair brown and wear dark clothes, flat shoes, a big cardigan. Flatten your bust and don’t smile. No rouge, no powder, no lipstick. Just do the job, collect your money and say nothing.’

Theresa sighed shakily. ‘You know I have to stay,’ she told her companion. ‘There’s no way I can walk out. I can’t go back to Bolton and I need to earn money.’ She stiffened her spine deliberately. ‘But I’m not changing how I look. I’ll manage them, no matter what. There’ll be new rules printed, I shall make sure of that.’

Monty closed his eyes. The select few who presided over the seamen’s haven were not beyond taking a fancy to this newcomer. Councillors, accountants, doctors, police officers and high-flying tradesmen were backers of this so-called charity, and they were not averse to pleasuring themselves by
enjoying fringe benefits, as they called the seamy side of their benevolent works. ‘Just wait till they see what you look like,’ he said softly.

Theresa sat and stared at the house. She had been raped and terrified, but she was wiser now. She would oil this machine till it ran like Swiss clockwork, no hiccups, no windings-down. ‘I’ll be safe enough,’ she replied. ‘You said I’d have a free hand within the household. So I’ll make sure they keep their hands off me, don’t you worry.’ If she couldn’t cope, she would have to do her own disappearing act.

‘Right, let’s get you inside, then.’ He stepped out of the car, his feet crunching on gravel as he went to open the boot.

Theresa alighted from the vehicle and stood poised on the brink of an uncertain future. At a push, she could go back, she supposed, back to the safety of the sanatorium, back to imprisonment, back to a doctor whose facial features haunted her now, while she felt lonely and vulnerable. She noticed the name of the place. ‘J
UTLAND
H
OUSE
’ was etched on a plaque next to large double doors.