The Corner House (56 page)

‘Indeed and I am not,’ snapped the Irishwoman.

‘You are.’

The older woman tutted her impatience. ‘What-ever, Monty’s coming. I said he could stay in your mother’s room for now. Do you mind?’

Jessica giggled. She did mind in a way, wanting to keep the room as it was for her mother’s return, but Monty was lovely and Maggie needed company her own age. ‘Maggie and Monty,’ she pondered aloud. ‘You sound like a pair already.’

For answer, Maggie threw a pillow across the room.

‘He probably wants to marry you,’ said Jessica loftily. ‘Although I can’t imagine why.’ Another pillow hit her full in the face.

‘I am not the marrying kind.’

‘And I won’t be a bridesmaid to a person who throws things at me.’ Jessica stood up. ‘Come on, then,’ she said. ‘Let’s get Mam’s room aired.’

They went down to the first floor, stripped the bed, switched on a little two-bar electric fire. ‘Maggie?’

‘What?’

‘Will Mam ever come home?’

Sighing, Maggie sank onto Theresa’s newly undressed bed. ‘TB’s a terrible, troublesome thing, Jess. It comes and it goes, or it comes and it stays. Put the business this way, pet, if Stephen Blake can do anything at all to make your mammy well, then he will. Isn’t he among all those specialist fellows? Well now, between the lot of them, they’ve got to come up with some ideas. She’s in the best place, all mountains and lakes, beautiful fresh air and the loveliest food.’

Jessica sniffed. ‘Can’t I go and visit her?’

‘We’ll see.’

We’ll see. It was always ‘we’ll see’ and ‘be patient’ and ‘don’t worry’. It wasn’t good enough. Sometimes, Jessica got really angry with people. She was young, but she knew about life and illness and misfortune. ‘There’s something you’re not telling me.’

Maggie groaned. How many more times was she going to be accused of withholding information? She, too, had had enough. ‘Jessica,’ she began, barely held patience etched deep into the syllables. ‘I love you more than anyone on God’s good earth. I never had children, so you’ve got all the love I have. On your life, I tell you now that I don’t hold anything back from you. On your life, not mine.’

Jessica swallowed. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Ah, it’s no matter. But.’

‘But what?’

‘If you carry on in front of Monty about him
and me being an article, you’ll suffer. It’ll be porridge and peas. You know how much you love porridge and peas.’

Jessica giggled. ‘Can’t I even ask him if he likes you a little, tiny bit?’

‘No, you can’t.’

‘Can’t I just—’ A pillow flew past Jessica’s head. ‘But I was only—’

‘Shut up.’

Jessica uttered not one more word.

Irene opened the door, allowing Maggie and Jessica to enter before following them up the hallway. It was a pretty little semi with two small living rooms and a kitchen downstairs. The front room had been given completely to Ruth McManus. Disabled by her stroke, the woman lay in a narrow bed near the window. A fire danced merrily in the grate, the flames looking incongruous in the sad, dark room. Next to the bed, a small table supported a spouted cup, a spittoon and the remains of a mashed-up dinner. There was no ashtray. It appeared that Irene fed her mother and gave her drinks, but she had obviously drawn the line at holding a cigarette to those narrow, wordless lips.

Jessica sat in one of the two upright chairs, Maggie in its twin. The only other seat in the room was a commode, a wooden item bought second-hand in a Bolton junk shop. Beneath the hinged lid was Ruth’s toilet onto which she had to be helped by her daughter.

‘How are you today?’ asked Maggie, her tone made higher by false geniality. ‘You look a bit brighter.’

The woman who ‘looked a bit brighter’ tried to
speak. The resulting sound was guttural and incomprehensible.

Jessica fiddled with her gloves. In the hall, three parcels containing Christmas gifts had been placed on a bookcase. There was a tie for Albert, a purse for Irene and a bed-jacket for Ruth.

Irene came back. ‘I’ve made a brew. Would you like to come through? Albert’s working, so it’s just the three of us. Come on,’ she insisted. ‘The back room’s much nicer than this.’

It certainly was. Red carpet, dark grey suite and floral curtains, pleasant pictures on the walls. A gate-legged table had been opened and set with crockery, cutlery, cakes and biscuits. ‘What a pretty room,’ exclaimed Jessica.

‘It gets the sun in spring and summer,’ replied Irene. ‘And there’s French windows leading out to the lawn.’ Except for the accent, she might have been a middle-class lady describing her middle-class life.

Maggie sat, accepted tea and a fruited bun spread with best butter. ‘Is your husband doing two jobs?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’ Irene bit through a cake and gulped it down, grabbed for another.

The woman had been starved, Maggie reminded herself. In childhood, Irene had been deprived of love, of food, of attention. To compensate, she had married a man she could control, had made a pleasant home for herself, was stuffing food into her mouth at a rate that would result in obesity at some stage. She was dedicating her whole life to the care of her mother, had lost status and income to mind her sick parent. Food was both consolation and compensation.

Jessica gazed round the room, noted the huge difference between this and the dark space in which her aunt lay. There were no pictures in Auntie Ruth’s room, and the floor was covered in brown lino. It was as if the two places were in separate houses, one new and clean, the other old-fashioned and neglected. She bit into a slice of fruit cake and kept her thoughts to herself.

‘Do you bring your mother in here ever?’ asked Maggie.

Irene swallowed another large lump of food. ‘No,’ she replied.

‘It might cheer her up a bit,’ suggested Maggie.

Irene shook her head. ‘For one, she stinks and for another, she doesn’t notice where she is.’

‘I think she does,’ said the older visitor.

Irene eyed Maggie. She did not brook contradiction, especially from a guest who was eating her food. ‘I know what she needs. I’ve looked after her ever since she came out of hospital, even gave both my jobs up. It makes no difference where she is.’

‘She can see and hear,’ insisted Maggie.

Irene simply stared at her guest.

Maggie shivered and asked for another cup of tea.

While pouring, Irene kept her eyes fixed on the Irishwoman’s face.

Jessica, aware of the tension, pointed to a photograph on the mantelpiece. ‘Is that my grandad?’

‘Yes,’ answered Irene. ‘He were a bad bugger and all, but he couldn’t hold a candle to my mam.’

Maggie felt sick. She had heard the tales of this young woman’s journey into adulthood, remembered Eva’s words as clear as day. ‘She told one man that his wife was going with the window cleaner,
then she told the wife a story about the husband sleeping with another neighbour. The street was practically in flames. As for Irene – she went with anybody and everybody …’ Irene was grabbing at love, love in the shape of food, a new house, in the form of any man who would lie down with her.

Irene stuffed another small cake into her mouth. Her face, never handsome, was gathering a layer of lard over poor bone structure, making her moonlike appearance even more expressionless. She never smiled, seldom frowned, had few lines on her skin. Maggie lowered her gaze and looked at plates almost emptied by her hostess. The grim harvest reaped at the end of Irene’s childhood was clearly illustrated by her behaviour this evening. ‘Irene, if you ever need help with your mammy, I’ll come.’

‘That’s very nice of you,’ replied Irene. ‘But I like to look after her myself. It’s very satisfying.’

Maggie’s spine went cold. She lifted her head and looked into eyes as empty as green glass marbles. This young lady had already paid for her mother’s funeral. For years, Eva Coates had ruminated on what would happen when Ruth’s body finally fell into the open arms of her daughter. ‘Maggie,’ Eva had been wont to say. ‘That Irene’s waited for ever to tell her mam where to go. I’d not want to be a witness when Ruth gets carried in at the back of that undertaker’s.’

Irene’s hands were steady as they gathered up plates.

‘Shall I wash those for you?’ asked Jessica, needing something to occupy her.

‘He’ll do them when he comes in.’

Maggie closed her mouth with a determined snap, told herself to lock her tongue away. The man was
doing two jobs, was working like a veritable Trojan, yet this little madam had him right under her thumb. So the abuse continued, was passed along the generations like a tightly wrapped parcel whose outer layers thickened and increased with time. Would it ever unravel, would it ever finish?

The Irishwoman cleared her throat. ‘Irene, she needs … she needs things around her, sounds, colours, anything that would stimulate her—’

‘We all need things. I never got nothing off her, not even dinners.’

‘So, it’s your turn now.’ Maggie recalled Theresa’s account of her famous showdown at Chorlton’s Fine Tailoring, a naked man in a chilly back yard, a pearl-handled pistol, a need for control, for equality. Hadn’t Theresa Nolan said those very words to Roy Chorlton? Hadn’t Theresa said, ‘It’s my turn’? And now, it was Irene’s turn to wreak a vengeance whose taste must have been far from sweet.

‘Exactly,’ replied Irene. ‘If we wait, we all get our turn.’

Maggie shivered again. The woman in the next room was not dead. She was worse than dead. A living corpse with no chance of managing the simplest bodily function, Ruth McManus existed in a dark brown world where she could hear, where she could see, where she could not express herself. Irene’s dream had come better than true, because she tended her mother’s corpse daily, spoke words of hatred and knew that her victim’s chances of responding were negligible. How paltry Theresa’s stab at justice appeared now, in the face of true obsession and real madness.

Jessica cleared her throat. ‘I’ll go and see Auntie Ruth again,’ she said.

‘Please yourself.’ Irene shrugged. ‘You’d be as well off talking to the wall.’

Maggie followed her charge into the other room. She sniffed the air, found the smells of sickness lurking beneath a liberal spraying of perfume. ‘Find the bathroom,’ she told Jessica. ‘And a nice flannel and a towel. I’ll just wipe the poor sick one’s face.’ Maggie waited until Jessica had left the room, then she pulled back the bed covers. These were tucked in tightly, but the Irishwoman persevered until what was left of Ruth McManus displayed itself.

Gagging heavily, Maggie staggered back.

Ruth’s lips twisted, tried to mould a sound. ‘Rat,’ she managed.

The stench of gangrene had sent Maggie spinning towards the door, but she gritted her teeth and returned to the bedside. Ruth’s body was filthy. The source of the worst smell was not visible, as it probably came from unwashed and untreated bedsores on Ruth’s back. A greyish undersheet had not been changed in days, possibly in weeks. Streaks of dried faeces had impregnated the flannelette, mingling with patches of urine and food. ‘You’ve some pain, girl,’ said Maggie. Blood supplies to Ruth’s back had probably been cut off, mostly because she had never been turned. The odour of dead flesh must have been emanating from that source for weeks, at least. There was not the slightest doubt in Maggie’s mind – this was severe, criminal neglect.

Jessica and Irene entered the room simultaneously. Maggie swung round and faced Ruth’s tormentor. ‘Take those things back upstairs,’ Maggie told Jessica. ‘I shan’t be needing them.’

Irene hovered in the doorway, her face as flat and
unresponsive as ever. ‘Do you want another cup of tea?’

This, decided Maggie, was insanity at its peak, evil at its worst. Yes, Irene had been ill treated as a child, but no human being in God’s world should be in Ruth McManus’s current state.

‘I told you she stinks,’ said Irene. ‘They do after a while. You can keep them too long, you know.’

‘Does a nurse come in, ever?’ Maggie fought to keep her tone level.

‘She doesn’t like anybody near her except me.’

You can keep them too long. It was clear that Irene fed her mother, yet she treated her like any of the other corpses she had handled over the years, saw Ruth as something dead, yet alive. Maggie felt a trembling deep in her bones, as if she had become the sudden victim of some neurological disorder. She didn’t know what to do. If she left Ruth in this state, she would be doing less than her humanitarian duty. But, if she took on Irene, the outcome might be terrible, especially with Jessica in the house. ‘Ah well,’ she said after a few seconds’ thought, ‘you can only do your best, Irene, no more and no less.’

Maggie and Jessica bundled themselves into coats, scarves and gloves, bade their hostess goodbye, then went to wait for a bus.

When the vehicle reached Tonge Moor Library, Maggie told Jessica to get off. ‘I’ll be back soon,’ she said. ‘Go in the house, close the door and don’t let anyone in unless it’s Monty. You never know when he’ll turn up.’

With her mind set on her immediate goal, Maggie Courtney carried on into town. It was time to get the police.

Maggie held onto Monty’s arm. It was Christmas Eve and she should have been elsewhere, should have been with Jessica. Jimmy and Eva were staying for the holidays, would be sleeping in Jessica’s attic while Jessica slept downstairs on one of the sofas. Monty had Theresa’s room, and Maggie thanked the Lord for Monty’s presence. Without him, she would have felt a sight worse.

They walked away from the bus stop, through a pair of heavy iron gates set into tremendously high walls. This was where the ill people lived, those poor, often forgotten souls who had been badly treated by life, folk who simply didn’t have the strength of mind or the power of soul to cope with a world that could be forever cruel.

‘Come on, girl,’ chided Monty. ‘We don’t want to be here till Easter, do we?’

Maggie smiled at him. He was taller, straighter and younger than before. Since the trial, Monty had pulled himself together, had become proud of his achievement in helping to close down a business whose roots lay in man’s need for filthy behaviour and filthier lucre.