The Corner House (44 page)

Maggie changed needles, tucking the left one under her arm. ‘Your fascination with death is unusual,’ she told Jimmy. ‘You should have followed the queer one’s daughter into undertaking.’

Eva suppressed a giggle.

‘And you keep reminding us of our own mortality,’ continued Maggie. ‘We all end up in a box and in the newspaper, but we don’t need telling every day that life is short.’

Jimmy lowered his guard, folded it, saved it for later.

‘Thank God for that,’ murmured the visitor. ‘If he’d found two or three, there would have been no containing him.’

‘He found four once,’ said Eva. ‘He was that excited, he lost his breath and nearly keeled over.’

The man of the house decided against rising to the bait. Ageing and wise, Jimmy knew his place. He was a figurehead, the one who sat at the front of the ship, but Eva was the pilot.

The front door opened. Jessica froze, hands clenched in tight fists, heart beating rapidly, goosebumps on her arms. She should not have told the doctor that Mam was home. Mam had hidden for years from doctors, never listening to Eva’s pleas. All those years in Liverpool had not been without
purpose. Mam had saved for a house, a place in which mother and daughter could be a family.

Mam was taking a long time to remove her outer clothing.

‘Theresa?’ shouted Maggie.

‘I’m coming.’

The moment her mother entered the room, Jessica could see that something had happened. But Mam wasn’t angry. She was pink and flustered, as if she had been somewhere interesting. Mam was far from furious. In fact, Theresa Nolan’s expression was not a stranger to happiness.

‘I’m sorry, Mam.’ Jessica wanted to test these uncharted waters.

‘What for?’

‘For telling Dr Blake where you were.’

‘That’s all right.’ Theresa sat at the table. Her appetite had never been good, but she couldn’t wait to get her teeth into a nice shive of Eva’s famous bread.

Jimmy looked at Maggie. Maggie dropped a stitch and looked at Eva. Eva watched Theresa. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Only coffee.’

Jimmy, uncomfortable in the sudden silence, decided to speak up. ‘Harry Bowker’s gone,’ he said. No-one told him to shut up, so he continued. ‘In his sleep. Kept a lovely plot, did Harry, best allotment for miles. He used to hang about with a girl called Martha in our street. She had a lazy eye, wore a patch on her glasses. Mind, he wed somebody else – a woman from Blackburn, I think.’ His tale died from lack of nourishment, because no-one was listening.

Theresa sat with a beautiful smile on her face, a tangle of curls dangling over her eyes. When she
blew away these obstacles, the other occupants of the room caught sight of a new brightness in the irises, a barely suppressed excitement which threatened to spill into Eva’s best china.

‘Coffee, you say?’ Maggie picked up her stitch.

‘Coffee,’ replied Theresa. ‘With sugar and biscuits that had seen better days.’

‘Fancy,’ murmured Eva.

‘Ooh, with sugar too,’ added a mischievous Maggie.

Jessica gave her attention to Jimmy, the only person who was not behaving like a total lunatic. He winked at her. ‘Cupid,’ he mouthed noiselessly.

Maggie read her pattern aloud, listing knits, purls and passing the slipped stitch over.

Jessica, fit to burst, had to end her agony. ‘Did Dr Blake find you?’ she asked her mother.

Eva left the room hurriedly, muttering about some ham on the bone, her shoulders and voice shaking. Maggie relieved herself of the half-finished tea-cosy and shovelled coal into an already bright inferno. Jimmy studied the fire irons. Women worked in peculiar ways and, while he sensed the hysteria in the air, the poor man could not quite pinpoint its origin.

‘Mam?’

‘Yes, he found me.’

‘Always asking for you, he were,’ said Jimmy. ‘And his interest weren’t just medical, you might say. He’s missed you something shocking, poor lad. After you scarpered from Williamson’s, he were broken-hearted. Anyroad, he’s found you now, so let’s hope for a happy ending.’

Jimmy’s words brought Theresa down to earth. There could be no happy ending for her and
Stephen, because she had a bad heart and a need for vengeance that had become a part of her essence.

Jessica, relieved beyond measure, took her place at the table. If Mam loved Dr Blake and if Dr Blake loved Mam, then that was all right, because Dr Blake was a nice man. He would be a stepfather – not a proper dad, but he would be better than no dad at all.

The meal was a procession of silences and sudden bursts of chatter. Theresa’s colour faded back to normal, Jimmy wittered on about old Harry and his leeks, Maggie and Eva discussed the pros and cons of plain and self-raising flours. Jessica ate her ham, watched and listened. Mam was in love with Dr Blake, but she still couldn’t manage to be completely happy.

Theresa Nolan forgave Eva Coates over a plate of tripe and onions in the UCP. Eva was the one with the tripe, a foodstuff with which Theresa had never reached an agreement. She remembered the old ‘shawlies’ from her youth, aged crones who usually gathered in clusters on street corners, women who had ‘seen life’, who sang the praises of cows’ stomachs, black puddings and beef tea ‘with plenty of floating fat’. ‘A good plate of manifold lines the ribs against winter’, was one of their favourite sayings. What had happened to all those pipe-smoking, stout-supping, snuff-sniffing women? Dead by now, Theresa supposed.

Eva shovelled the last morsel into her mouth. ‘That’s what I call a meal,’ she announced.

Theresa bit back a tart response about the subject. It was plain that Eva was already slightly uncomfortable in her company. Eye contact was strictly at a minimum. Having finished her gourmet lunch, the older woman gazed around the café and called out to those she recognized.

‘Eva?’ Theresa said softly.

‘Hello, Gert,’ called Eva. ‘Did you get that tooth out?’

By way of response, the Gert in question displayed
a gap in her lower jaw. ‘He says I’ve got roots like dandelions. You should have seen my face.’

Eva turned to Theresa. ‘Her face isn’t much without the bruises – she must have looked a bugger with a black and blue gob. And her husband’s a nice-looking bloke. Life’s funny, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’

Something in Theresa’s tone caused Eva to jump out of her seat. She crossed to another table in order to take a closer look at Gert’s dentist’s misdeeds.

Theresa placed her elbow on the table, resting her chin on the palm of her hand. Eva was taking evasive action again. But certain topics needed airing before Theresa could get on with her arrangements.

Eva returned. ‘I think he very near broke her jaw.’

‘Eva, I—’

‘More like a bloody butcher, he is. Jimmy had to get his gum stitched at the infirmary after visiting that man. If he’s a dentist, I’m a flaming brain surgeon.’

A short silence ensued. Theresa, her hand still acting as a head rest, waited for Eva to settle down. But Eva didn’t settle down. She rooted about in her handbag, then in her shopping basket. She read lists, counted the money in her purse twice, checked her Co-op divi sheet, examined in great detail a pound of bacon she had just purchased.

‘Have you done?’ Theresa asked.

Eva froze, then placed her purse on the table.

‘You must know what this is about,’ Theresa went on.

Eva Coates – Harris-as-was – stared down at her empty plate, which wasn’t quite empty, as it still
boasted a small pool of white sauce and a few scraps of onion.

‘It’s about Katherine.’

‘Ta-ra, Eva,’ yelled Toothless Gert as she left the shop.

Eva employed a wave of her hand as response. ‘I’m sorry,’ she told Theresa. She could not think of one sensible sentence to add to her apology. The recently ingested tripe sat very heavily in Eva’s nervous stomach.

‘That was a terrible thing you did, Eva. I mean – well, you know I didn’t want that pregnancy. I was grateful to you – I’m still grateful. You took me in, found me the house, did all you could for me.’ Theresa paused, remembering. ‘I made my mind up not to get too fond of Jessica, but she crept under my skin. Then I didn’t like the idea of her needing me, so I gave her to you while I provided for her from a distance.’

Eva nodded, her teeth biting down on her lower lip.

‘You got both of them, really.’ Theresa leaned across the table and lowered her tone. ‘I should have been told. Anybody giving birth should get the chance to see her baby. Well, I met Katherine for the first time several weeks ago. And don’t worry, I sat in a café with Bernard and Katherine, and I said nothing to my daughter, the daughter I’d never clapped eyes on until she was going on twelve years of age. I was very upset, but I’ve no intention of upsetting her other mother.’

Eva raised her head and looked Theresa full in the face. She had to take this, had to force herself to pay the small price, to accept the tiny punishment meted out by Theresa.

‘Because Liz Walsh is my daughter’s mother,’ continued Theresa. ‘She and Bernard are doing a grand job, giving her a good life, looking to her needs. Her clothes were beautiful, Eva. I know why you did it. Don’t cry, please. Don’t set me off, because I reckon we could cause a flood between us. Eva, they’ve given her more than clothes. My girl is loved, and I’m thankful for that.’

Eva wept noiselessly into one of Jimmy’s hankies.

‘Life’s so sad and so short,’ Theresa said. ‘Even eighty-odd years isn’t much of a span, not when you look at history. But I won’t even get that long, will I? So.’ She inhaled deeply, tried to prevent a catch in her throat causing a bout of coughing. ‘The terrible thing you did was also the right thing, Eva. Look at me. Look at the way I was then, too. I’m a bag of bones with a heart that carries on like a broken clock: miss a beat, tick twice. I’ll stop altogether one of these days.’

‘Don’t say that, love—’

‘I’ll say what I want to say.’ Theresa Nolan would be doing a lot of speaking up in the next few days. ‘When I first found out about Katherine, I felt like throttling you. Then, when I came to your house for Christmas, I had to cool down for Jessica’s sake. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve tried to put myself in your place. If I’d been the midwife that night, I don’t know what I would have done. It’s all over now. All the worrying you must have done …’

Eva rubbed at her reddened nose. ‘I persuaded them to leave Bolton, and they finished up within spitting distance of you.’

Theresa opened her bag and took out an envelope. She had to become businesslike, to make sure that Eva and the others would see to Jessica. ‘This is a
copy of my will. Keep it. I’ve paid a solicitor to deal with everything when the time comes. Jessica’s guardians will be you, Dr Blake, the Walsh brothers and Maggie.’

‘Right.’ The sense of relief was almost overwhelming. Eva felt as if she had begun to relax for the first time in over a decade.

‘The girls have to be told, Eva. They’ve to be introduced to one another. Even if Liz Walsh is still alive, I want my twins to know each other. I’ve left a bit of leeway for unforeseeable circumstances, but it’s got to happen before they get to twenty-five.’

Eva, still too choked to deliver a string of sensible words, nodded again. Theresa talked like a text book, as if she’d been studying while she was away.

‘Stephen had an identical twin brother.’

In spite of the circumstances, Eva noticed that her companion had not awarded Dr Blake his full title. They were on first-name terms, then. If only Theresa could enjoy better health, they might have made a lovely couple.

‘It took him years to get over the war. His twin brother was blown to pieces and Stephen was the MO for that unit. He told me that identical twins have a very special relationship. He was in shock for years after his brother died, as if a part of himself had passed away at the same time. I’ve thought about that. If Katherine and Jessica go through life without meeting one another, we’ll be denying them their birthright.’

Eva took the folder and placed it in her basket. She sniffed away her tears and broached another troublesome subject. ‘If anything does happen to you, yon daft sister of yours will try to get Jess.’

Theresa nodded thoughtfully.

‘She’s a bad bugger,’ added Eva.

Theresa swallowed. Ruth might be bad, but Theresa, all nice and gentle on the surface, was a raging river of hatred underneath the pretty manners. At least Ruth screamed out against the world. Ruth didn’t go round cafés and shops with a loaded gun in her bag. So who was the real lunatic?

‘Theresa?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you going to get yourself looked at?’

She had promised Stephen, had given her word to the one man about whom she had managed to care. ‘In time,’ she said carefully.

Eva muttered something about buying a few cow heels and some pigs’ trotters.

‘Leave it until after I’ve moved out, please,’ begged Theresa. ‘You’ve eaten the tripe and I’ve watched you. No feet, Eva. Not just yet. I can’t be doing with feet, not while I’ve a lot on my mind.’

They left the UCP, walked through Bolton, bought an evening paper and some stewing steak. As they passed the fishmarket, both women stopped and looked at Danny Walsh, father of a little boy, uncle to Katherine.

‘Liz had a hysterectomy,’ said Eva, her tone sombre.

‘I know,’ answered Theresa. ‘Never mind, she can borrow one of my two girls for a while. But not for ever. Nothing can be for ever.’

‘Bloody bitch,’ roared Teddy Betteridge. His father, who had died from alcoholism, seemed to have reared a son and heir destined to follow the same route through a short existence. ‘Who told her? That’s what I want to know.’ He glared at his partners in misbehaviour. ‘She’s bolted. She’s taken my
kids with her.’ A tear trickled down his beer-bloated face. ‘I love my kids, I do. I’ve no reason to live now.’

Roy Chorlton, who had consumed two pints of bitter, had sat and watched while Teddy Betteridge made his way through eight. Now on his ninth, Teddy was becoming belligerent.

Ged Hardman flicked a beer mat off the edge of the table, caught it, repeated the exercise.

‘I wish you’d stop that,’ yelled Teddy. ‘You’ve got me dizzy.’