The Corner House (47 page)

He heard her coming, though the chattering of his teeth was almost deafening. He didn’t care any more. With his skin stiffening and his extremities numb, he knew that death would arrive within hours. Perhaps she would finish him off, put him out of his misery. Whatever, it no longer mattered.

The door opened. She stepped inside, drew the woollen length across his shoulders. ‘Come,’ she told him.

He could not move.

With incredible tenderness, Theresa wrapped him up and led him into the yard. ‘Just a few more steps and we’re there,’ she said several times.

Inside, he huddled in a corner away from her. There was no sign of the gun, yet he feared her unpredictability. Was the woman mad? She had threatened to shoot him, had shut him out naked in the cold, had dragged him back in. To what? To a
cup of tea. She had set the kettle on the ring, had lit the black paraffin stove to heat the workroom.

‘It’s all over,’ she told him as if reading his innermost thoughts.

He shivered uncontrollably as his mechanism fought to redistribute the near-frozen blood in his veins. She piled further lengths of cloth around him, layering each piece so that air would be trapped between woven fibres. ‘Why?’ he asked, almost biting through his tongue with teeth that refused to be still.

She sat down while the kettle simmered its way towards boiling point. ‘I had to have my pound of flesh, I suppose.’

‘But you brought me in.’

‘Yes.’

‘Why?’ he asked again.

Theresa considered her reply to what was, in the opinion of both people present, a very good question. ‘You took away my dignity, so I removed yours. For many years, I felt as if you and the other two had killed a part of me. But tonight was about being in charge, I suppose, just to warn you that I was capable of fighting back. Yes, I did mean to kill you, but I’ve changed, grown up. I seem to have matured very suddenly.’ She crossed the room and made the tea.

‘We had no luck, any of us,’ he said, his voice stronger. ‘Ged got lumbered with his mother as well as that dreadful skin. Teddy had an unhappy marriage and a terrible drink problem. I’m just ugly. No girl would ever look at me.’

‘Would you like me to contradict you, tell you that you’re handsome?’

He all but laughed. ‘No, not at all.’

‘Good.’ She held the cup to his lips and supported his head as he sipped the scalding, over-sweet concoction.
‘Is it poisoned?’ he asked after a minute or so.

‘It isn’t.’ Theresa put the cup down, dragged a stool across the room and sat facing him. She took one of his hands, then the other, massaging each in turn until the blood flowed more easily.

‘You could have left me out there,’ he said softly. ‘Thank you.’

Theresa almost grinned. ‘Believe me – for ten minutes or so, you were going to be abandoned to the elements. Then I thought: No, he’ll only get chilblains.’

Roy Chorlton laughed, then the laughter broke wide open and turned to tears. The girl even had humour. ‘I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry,’ he kept saying until sobs claimed his breath.

Theresa allowed him to cry, simply standing in the doorway until his sobs abated. This was, perhaps, the moment for which she had been preparing all evening, or, possibly, for the past thirteen years. ‘I forgive you,’ she said. And although she didn’t fully understand her feelings, she meant every word.

‘Mam?’ It was great to be able to talk to Mam regularly. Not since the days of the devil in the coal hole had Theresa and Jessica actually lived together. Williamson’s didn’t count. Williamson’s was just a TB hospital, a place to which Mam might have to return for a month or so, but it would not be for ever. For ever was here, on Tonge Moor Road, with grocery shops, a library, chip shops, ironmongers, a big Co-op.

‘Yes, love?’

‘Did you know that Michelangelo died just as Shakespeare was born? On the very same day?’

Theresa wiped the sweat from her brow.

‘Leave the curtains, Theresa,’ ordered Maggie. She addressed Jessica. ‘When was that, then?’

‘Sixteenth century,’ replied Jessica.

‘What was the date?’ Theresa asked, her fingers becoming very annoyed with brass curtain rings.

‘April the twenty-third.’

‘And the year?’ Maggie who was moving furniture, stopped to glare at Theresa, who should have been sitting on the furniture.

‘I can’t remember,’ answered Jessica. ‘It doesn’t matter – I was only saying—’

‘It must have mattered to him that died.’ Maggie flopped onto a sofa. ‘As for Shakespeare – wouldn’t that be some sort of sacrilege for you English folk? God, aren’t you all supposed to know about the Bard of Avon, his birthday and all that? So Michelangelo died and your man was born. Out with the paint and in with the typewriter.’

Jessica laughed. ‘They didn’t have typewriters. They used feathers.’

‘I suppose they walked behind the goose till one fell out.’ Maggie giggled. ‘Or they took their lives in their hands and had a quick pluck. Geese are terrible fierce.’

Jessica walked to the window of her new house. And it was her house, too, with deeds she had perused before leaving them to be minded at the bank. She took the curtains from Theresa and carried on with the threading of hooks and rings.

Maggie thought about Shakespeare. She could remember just one play. ‘Ah, yes. Didn’t your man sit there on his horse, a saucepan on his head, God for England and St George – all that kind of stuff. Then he suggested using dead bodies for the fortifications. Only the English could be so barbaric.’

‘Henry the Fifth.’ Theresa was very pleased with herself. ‘It was a metaphor.’

‘Was that with or without vinegar?’ asked Maggie sweetly.

Jessica decided that she liked Maggie. The argument – whatever its subject had been – between Mam and Eva was settled, so Jessica would still be able to visit Auntie Eva and Uncle Jimmy. But Maggie was great fun. She knew loads of daft stories about goblins and leprechauns, and she could sing
and dance an Irish reel at the same time with a glass of water on her head. ‘Maggie?’

‘That’s me.’

‘Did you really never go to school?’

The Irishwoman made a strange sound, something like a ‘pshaw’. ‘Of course I went to school. It was seven miles there, seven miles back, and not a daycent pair of boots to me name. So I went just the once – I think it was a Thursday. Oh, it tired me out, all that praying and chanting and catechism and still seven miles home at the end of it.’

‘Just once?’ The girl’s eyes were round.

Maggie nodded. ‘I left early because it looked like rain.’

Theresa exploded with laughter. ‘You went once and left early?’

‘That’s the truth of it.’

‘It explains a lot,’ said Theresa. ‘Large gaps in the education of a person do show, at least once a day.’

Maggie threw a cushion at her sometime ally.

‘Everyone’s silly at times,’ said Jessica. ‘I had an invisible friend called Lucy. I met her in the dresser mirror when I was about three. Of course, she was me, really. Till I met Katherine, then she was nearly me.’

Maggie dropped the other cushion. Theresa sat in a dining chair and tried not to look shocked, tried not to look at Maggie. ‘Katherine?’ she managed eventually, her voice pitched rather high.

Jessica blushed. ‘I never told anyone. When Williamson’s let me go down to the farm, I escaped.’ She remembered her first real contact with nature, the sounds of birds, the clean scent of damp earth. ‘She just appeared with a dog – it had a stupid name. And she went.’ Such a special, precious, hurtful day that had been.

Theresa cleared her throat. They had met, yes, and Jessica had stored the memory for all time. Against all the odds, Katherine and Jessica’s paths had crossed. ‘She must have been pretty if she looked like you.’

Like many blondes, Jessica considered herself very pale and uninteresting. ‘No, she was ordinary. The dog was crackers, though. I told Katherine lies, said I was from a big farm with loads of animals. I was jealous of her. She had lovely clothes and a dog of her own.’

At last, Theresa managed to look at Maggie. ‘How do you feel about dogs?’

Maggie shrugged. ‘As long as they’re not overcooked, they taste very nice with onions and taties. And the skins come in handy for slippers and gloves.’

While Theresa laughed nervously, Jessica almost stopped breathing. If she said nothing, if she held back words and giggles, she might get a dog.

‘We’ll get you a dog,’ Theresa promised recklessly. Was she making too many of these promises? She had sworn to Stephen that she would go in for tests, had told Roy Chorlton that the bitterness was over, was offering Jessica a dog. ‘There are fields nearby where you could walk a dog. I’ll get you one before I go to see about my chest.’

Jessica thought she might burst. She had everything now – a home, a mother, nearly a dog. She had everything except a father, and she couldn’t ask Mam questions about him, not while Mam had to go and see about having TB and a weak heart. Mind, there might be a stepfather in the offing … ‘Mam?’

‘Yes?’

‘Are you going to marry Dr Blake?’

Theresa blushed.

‘He hasn’t asked her yet,’ volunteered Maggie.
‘She won’t stand still long enough in the one place in case he does ask her.’

Many a true word was spoken in jest, thought Theresa. Her experience of men at close quarters had been limited, because she had scarcely dared to contemplate intimacy since the night when Jessica and Katherine had been conceived. The brutish cruelty of her first encounter had left her bruised mentally as well as physically. Stephen had put the physical side right, but could she live with a man, could she really trust anyone? ‘One thing at a time,’ she warned her daughter. ‘The dog, the whole dog and nothing but the dog. So be quiet.’

After threading the rings, Jessica sought permission to go outside. When the dog arrived, she would need to know where to take it. ‘Don’t go far,’ shouted Theresa to her daughter’s disappearing back. ‘It goes dark early.’

When Jessica had gone, Theresa flopped back in her chair.

‘They’ve got to come together some time,’ commented Maggie.

‘I know. If I’m not around, Bernard has promised to see to all that.’

Maggie grunted. ‘Make sure of that,’ she said. ‘Nature brought them to life at the same time for a reason. Those ties are very close.’

‘I’m sure they are,’ answered Theresa.

Soon, she would be very sure.

Danny Walsh sat with his wife and mother-in-law in their enlarged kitchen. The remains of a feast lay on the table, fish bones on huge dinner plates, a clutter of cups, cutlery and napkins on a tray.

‘That was a very nice meal,’ Danny told his
mother-in-law, who thrived on praise, though she never knew how to cope with it.

‘A bit more salt in me sauce next time,’ she said.

Pauline patted her stomach and groaned. ‘I feel as if I’ve eaten a three-piece suite,’ she said. ‘Stuffed to the gills, I am.’

Danny cocked his head on one side, listening for the baby. The baby was his pride and joy; he was also Pauline’s main reason for living. She had done it, had achieved motherhood against all odds.

Edna Greenhalgh started to fiddle about with the debris.

‘Leave it, Mam,’ said Danny.

‘No, I won’t. She’s ate a couch and two chairs, and you’ve been working all day. Sit still till I make another brew.’

While Edna clattered about, Danny closed his eyes and concentrated on contentment. He was a lucky man, with a wonderful wife, a son, a lovely home and a mother-in-law who wasn’t too bad. Edna kept Danny on his toes, reminded him never to take life for granted.

His mind wandered, went back to the day when he had acted as substitute for his brother, the day on which Eva had extracted money for Theresa Nolan, the golden time when he had met Pauline in Chorlton’s shop.

‘Do you think he’ll hang?’ asked Pauline. There was no need for names, because the main topic for weeks had been the killing of Ged Hardman.

‘He should hang,’ said Edna from her place at the sink. Edna was of the hang-them-now set, one of those who might have asked questions after the trap door had opened and the hanged man’s legs had swung for at least five minutes.

‘I’d say it was manslaughter,’ answered Danny. ‘Not planned, like a real murder.’

‘Lily Hardman’s heartbroke,’ continued Edna. ‘He’d just left home, too, had his first house. They say she’s gone into one of them declines, stopping in bed, won’t eat.’

Pauline spoke up. ‘That won’t last long. She’s better at business than most men in this town.’ Pauline tried to imagine life without her baby, but found the concept unbearable. ‘Still, losing her son will slow her down a bit.’

Danny Walsh’s thoughts strayed to Theresa Nolan, who had been the indirect cause of the meeting between him and Pauline. She had moved today. Danny had seen furniture being delivered, had slowed his car while passing to watch Theresa sweeping the short path to her front door.

‘I wonder how Theresa’s going on?’ muttered Pauline.

Danny frowned. As ever, his wife seemed to tune into his thoughts as if she had antennae built into her head. He jerked his own head in the direction of Edna. Pauline knew about Katherine’s origins, about the rape, the birth of twins, but Edna had been kept in the dark for many years. She was old, curious, full of gossip.

Edna cleared her throat. ‘Right,’ she said, swivelling round and planting large, slipper-clad feet well apart. ‘Let’s be having this straight, shall we? There’s nowt I don’t know, Danny. And our Pauline never told me – I just listened now and again.’ She nodded vigorously while drying her hands on a tea-towel. ‘I’d not be surprised if them three blokes have death wishes after what they did. Happen Teddy Betteridge lost his rag over summat to do with Theresa Nolan.’

Danny’s mouth fell open.

‘Shut that, Danny, there’s a tram coming.’ The old woman warmed the pot, spooned in some Black and Green’s. ‘By rights, Theresa has two kiddies. I’ve heard you both chunnering about it. I’ve said nowt to nobody, so you can talk free in front of me, not just behind me back.’

‘But, Mam,’ cried Pauline. ‘How long have you—?’

‘About three year. But I know when to keep me gob shut, which is more than can be said about yon husband of yours. Good job it’s not summer, he’d be catching flies.’