The Corner House (53 page)

Downstairs, daggers were unsheathed and getting sharper. Maggie, who had not budged an inch, said not one word as Ruth McManus struggled to her feet. Would a bit of vinegar lift the stains from upholstery? Maggie wondered. Would Jessica be pacified? Would this awful woman bugger off back to hell, the place from which she had obviously originated? But Maggie’s silence was not a sign of
defeat. Each woman recognized that the other was gearing up, preparing for the fray.

Ruth rubbed ineffectually at her ruined best red suit.

Maggie picked up an apple and bit into it.

‘Well?’ The intruder’s voice was shaky.

‘Well what?’

‘Aren’t you going to clout that little madam?’

Maggie shook her head vigorously, dislodging henna-dyed curls and a handful of hairpins. ‘I don’t believe in it,’ she mumbled through a mouthful of orange pippin. ‘See, the way I look at it is – well, if you batter a child, it grows up to be a child-batterer. I mean, look at your own case. You’re selfish, power crazy and a freak. So you’ve made your daughter into the same thing, but probably worse, because she has a brain. God help your grandchildren.’

Ruth did an impression of a stirred-up snake, almost hissing before she struck back. ‘You bloody bitch,’ she spat, furious because the cleverer words had not yet arrived.

Maggie continued to gnaw at the apple, a feat made no easier by the dull edges of old dentures. ‘Say what you like – you’re out of here.’

Ruth hesitated. As hesitation did not form a part of her usual repertoire, she was further annoyed. Angrily, she lit another of the cigarettes provided by her niece. ‘When our Theresa dies, all I’ll need is to talk to the right people – doctors, welfare, our Jessica’s schoolteachers. When they find out my niece is living with an owld woman with no blood-ties, there’ll be a right cartload of ructions. Then I’ll get her.’

‘You?’ laughed Maggie. ‘With no job and no house? And no legal papers signed by Theresa to
nominate you as guardian? Not a cat in hell’s chance, Ruth.’

‘We’ll see.’

Maggie shrugged, the movement designed to conceal panic. What if they tracked her back to Liverpool and discovered her past? ‘Do your worst, and I shall do mine. I am the legal guardian of Jessica Nolan. Nothing you can do will alter that, especially once your character has been investigated by the so-called powers.’

‘Just you wait,’ snapped Ruth.

‘Oh, I shall. Bye-bye for now. You know where the door is.’

Ruth was beside herself. The rent collector had been shouting abuse through the door, and Maggie bloody Courtney had sent a solicitor’s letter to do with the guardianship of Jessica. With her hands tied by the letter’s implications, Ruth was red-raw angry with the whole world. Suffering from nicotine withdrawal and a dearth of milk stout, food and coal, she was bordering on the hysterically dangerous.

No-one in the immediate vicinity seemed willing to employ Ruth McManus, which fact had delivered a blow to her ego, as Ruth saw herself as the greatest, the fastest, the most competent. She was going to try a big hotel in town, a place where she was less well known. There were no cigarettes, the tinned food was running out and the weather had turned. Although July was only half over, Ruth sat in her living room wrapped in two jumpers and a shawl.

No-one had visited her since God alone knew when. Irene seemed to have given up. She’d gone and got herself a second job collecting money from people who bought clothes and furniture through a
loan club. So Irene worked a normal day in the funeral shop, then did her other job in the evenings. Irene would have money. Irene wouldn’t miss a few bob, a couple of quid for bread and ciggies.

She threw off her shawl and donned her unhappiest coat, a grey thing that had accompanied her to the mill for years. Noxious emissions from Bolton’s various industries seemed to have seeped into the coat, lending it a patchy, gun-metal sadness. Ruth’s favourite colour was red. Like Maggie, she had a tendency to combine inappropriate shades, her outfits ranging from orange right through to burgundy, the resulting mixed marriages often turning out less than ideal. But today was a grey day, a day for looking homeless and starving.

She left by the back door in order to avoid direct confrontation with the rent collector. She wasn’t herself, hadn’t felt right since Jessica’s tantrum. As for the solicitor’s letter – that had kicked the rest of the belly out of her. She was even getting headaches, pains in her back, a bit of sciatica down her left leg.

Dodging in and out of doorways, Ruth made her way down Derby Street until she reached the funeral parlour. Irene would be round the back doing things with cotton wool and face powder. After negotiating a narrow side alley, Ruth found herself at the back door. This was locked against prying eyes and strange kids who liked looking at the dead. Irene had been one of those queer children in her time.

Uncomfortable when in the vicinity of death, Ruth tapped at the door. Irene opened it. She was dressed all in white, her dun hair bundled into a mob cap, a plastic apron tied over the bleached overall. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said in her usual monotone.

‘Can I have a word?’

Irene stepped back and made a gesture that invited her mother in.

Ruth paused, took one last, deep breath of air and entered a large room filled with the sickly-sweet aromas of disinfectants and preservatives. ‘Are you on your own?’

‘No.’ Irene pointed out four sheet-enveloped figures. ‘Mrs Hardcastle, Mrs Charleson, Billy Mayer from John Street – he were only twenty-one, motorbike accident – and Elsie Shipperbottom.’

‘Elsie?’

Irene nodded.

‘What happened?’

The younger woman shrugged. ‘She just went to bed and died. I’ve not seen her death certificate. I just clean them up and pass them back to their families.’

Ruth perched on the edge of a chair. Her daughter seemed so efficient, so adult. It suddenly occurred to Ruth that she had no tangible power over this girl. Married and with two jobs, Irene seemed to be the older of the pair. ‘Erm … I thought I’d walk down and see how you’re going on, like.’

Irene whipped the sheet off Elsie and started to wash the body.

Ruth turned her head slightly so that she might avoid the sight of a dead working colleague.

‘Thirty years in the carding shed doesn’t half show,’ commented Irene. ‘Poor woman’s hands are wrecked.’

The visitor bit down against a remark about Elsie Shipperbottom’s hands now being beyond repair and redundant.

‘I hear you lost your job,’ Irene remarked.

‘Aye. The house and all. I’ve got no money, nowhere to live and nowt to eat. There’s been an eviction notice.’

Irene brushed Elsie’s silver-streaked auburn hair. ‘Still, you’re better off than these in here, eh? This one’s next address’ll be Tonge Cemetery. Makes you grateful for every day, working here.’

Ruth’s patience was gossamer thin at the best of times. ‘You’ll have to lend me some money,’ she said.

‘Lend?’

‘Aye, that’s what I said.’

Irene placed the hairbrush on the edge of Elsie’s table. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word, Mam.’ She paused for thought. ‘No, that’s not true. If you lend something – and, let’s face it, that doesn’t happen often – you expect it back within half an hour. The whole town knows if you’ve not been paid back quick smart. But as for paying back what you owe …’ Irene shrugged, her hands wide apart. ‘What’s the money for?’

Ruth tried not to grind her teeth. ‘Food, rent, gas.’

‘What about your ciggies?’

‘If you can spare enough.’

Irene covered up a lady who had raised four children, a lady whose husband, crippled in a war accident, worked from his wheelchair mending shoes on a last in a cold, outdoor workshop next to the lavatory shed. Elsie had often given the neglected Irene a jam butty or a piece of pie.

‘Well?’ Ruth’s dander was up and preparing to operate.

Irene sat down. ‘“Eeh, Dad, isn’t she ugly?” ’ she began. ‘I can see you now, telling me there were nowt to eat, but oh, you had your smokes. No shoes to go to school in, no chance of a place at the grammar school for me, because you had to have your ale and your Woodbines.’

Ruth jumped up.

‘And don’t start telling me I shouldn’t talk to you like this, because it’s time somebody did. See, I’ll leave a box of food on your doorstep, because I’m not as wicked as you, not quite. But you can find a job and pay your own bloody bills, Mam. We’re moving soon, going to buy a house with a garden and a garage. There’s no car yet, but there will be.’ Irene nodded thoughtfully. ‘Here’s me, refusing you ciggy money so that I can live a normal life. But you refused me living money so that you could smoke.’

It occurred to Ruth that she had spoken no more than a few syllables since arriving here, on Irene’s patch. She should have found neutral territory, somewhere away from the funeral place. In this white, spotlessly clean room, Irene was queen.

‘You might as well go, Mam. You know you don’t like dead bodies.’

Ruth’s mouth opened, but no words emerged from her mouth. She was suddenly like a dictionary with most of its pages ripped out.

Irene walked past her mother, opened the door wide and waited.

‘It’s all right, I’m going.’ Ruth picked up her slender, empty handbag and stalked out. Just before the door closed behind her, she spun round. ‘I said you were ugly because you were. And you still are. Do you keep an extra pillowcase for him to put over your head before he touches you?’

The door did not slam. It was eased home with a gentleness that served only to infuriate the outsider even further. She threw herself at the door, kicking and pounding until she had exhausted herself.

Mr McRae parked the hearse in the side alley, climbed out and came up behind Ruth. He placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Mrs McManus?’

She spun round. ‘What? Bloody what?’

He studied her. The wildness in her eyes was so bright that it seemed to send out small sparks of fire. She was shaking from head to foot, and her hair, newly streaked with fine strands of grey, stood out around her face like the mane of some jungle animal. ‘You should see a doctor,’ he said mildly.

‘I don’t need a flaming doctor. I want a gradely daughter, one as’ll see to me when I need help.’

Mr McRae nodded slowly. ‘She’s the best worker I’ve ever had. Irene has a gift, a very special talent. She treats the deceased with a great deal of respect.’ It was no wonder Irene worked here, he thought. The preparation room was so peaceful, an ideal escape from this virago of a mother.

‘But what about me? Me? I’m her mother, I’m the one who saw to her when she were little, gave her a roof, food, clothes.’

The undertaker remembered Irene, recalled chasing her on several occasions. Even then, years ago, Irene had talked to the dead, had touched them, had loved them in her own, very peculiar way. ‘Mrs McManus, we provide a service for people who are grieving. They visit, come to see their loved ones in their coffins. We can’t have you kicking doors and screaming, not here. Please go.’

Ruth eyed him speculatively. ‘I came for money – she owes me two quid, but she can’t pay me till she gets her wages off you.’

He drew a black leather wallet from a pocket, took out a five-pound note, closed the wallet.

Ruth’s mouth watered as she thought of Capstan Full Strength, fish and chips, a pint of beer.

‘Promise me you’ll stay away,’ he said.

She nodded vigorously, snatched the money and made to leave.

He grabbed her arm. ‘Any repeat performances and I’ll get the police.’

She ran. For the moment, Ruth McManus had all she needed. It did not occur to her to pay her back rent or to pursue the chance of work in town. She had money, so she spent it.

Back in the house where she had no right to be, Ruth lit a Capstan, leaned back in her chair and patted a full belly. She would manage. Everything would turn out all right, said her ale-softened brain. All she needed now was a decent daughter …

The letter arrived at the end of August. Edna, who had just served breakfast to her daughter and son-in-law, collected the mail from the doormat. ‘More bills, I shouldn’t wonder,’ she remarked as she placed the envelopes next to Danny’s cup and saucer.

He opened a gas bill, an account from a roofer, a couple of receipts. The last item was bulkier, so he poured another cup of tea before looking at it.

‘What’s up?’ asked Pauline as she watched his face changing while he perused several sheets.

‘It’s from a firm of lawyers,’ he said eventually. ‘Roy Chorlton sold his house last month. It says he’s thinking of emigrating permanently. It doesn’t even tell us where he’s going.’

Edna clicked her dentures. ‘What’s that to do with us?’ she asked.

Danny laid down the letter and took a deep breath. ‘He’s put aside twenty thousand pounds. For Jessica.’

The deterioration in Ruth McManus was swift. By mid-September, she was up before the Bolton bench for shoplifting and for causing an affray. Her daughter, Irene Mott, sat in court, ate a quarter of a pound of treacle toffee while listening to the case, then paid the fine imposed.

Outside, she walked swiftly away from the magistrates’ court and towards the only peace she had known. But even her peace offered disquiet today, as one of her clients was a young mother and another was that young woman’s child. The job was all right until it came to children. Perhaps she would ask Mr McRae to prepare the three-year-old boy. Suicides were never pretty, but this one had gassed her son as well.

‘Hang on!’

Irene stopped in her tracks, but did not turn her head. It was Mam, of course. Mam, who had lost three jobs for stealing, for drinking, for slacking. Mam, who had battered a shopkeeper for trying to retrieve his own property, Mam, who had just cost Irene the price of a new carpet.

‘You’ve got to help me, Irene.’

Irene, the rat, wanted to desert the sinking ship,
but she stopped, waited. There was no point in trying to escape anyway; the ubiquitous Ruth McManus would find her sooner or later.

The younger woman glanced down at the hand on her sleeve, saw nicotined fingers, raised her eyes until she was looking straight into her mother’s dark brown irises. It worked. The hand withdrew, joined its fellow in a search for smokes. Items in the handbag rustled and rattled until they made way for Woodbines and matches.