The Girl From Penny Lane (11 page)

‘We’ll be on the telephone in London, since I’ll need to be in contact with the newspaper,’ Stuart said. ‘So there’ll be no excuse for not getting in touch, young lady. Come on, let’s get sat down now you are here.’

‘I’ll just put me jacket on the stand,’ Lilac said, wriggling out of her short coat. ‘Ooh, I’ve been thinking of steak and kidney pudding all the way . . . I caught a cab, you know, like a proper lady!’

Stuart looked down at the vivid little face so near his own and remembered the first time he had met Lilac. A skinny, scruffy kid she’d been, covered with mud and stinking like . . . like the Mersey at low tide, which was where the mud had come from. He’d made her take a bath in the old tin tub before her aunt’s fire and had been astonished, when she emerged from the water, to find she had a mass of red-gold curls and very white skin as well as a pair of dazzlingly blue eyes. She’d been a regular little brick then, for all Nellie mourned her selfishness and quick temper, and she was a regular little brick now, though she did still tend to see life strictly with a view to her own best interests. But Nellie was all she had in the world, apart from a few friends her own age and a good many ardent young men, and Lilac had stressed that she would cope happily with life alone to make it possible for Nellie to go down to London with a clear conscience. Stuart was well aware that, had Lilac bemoaned her fate, said she’d pine for Nellie, his wife would have felt guilty and unhappy about putting her husband before the girl she had treated more like a daughter than an adopted sister, and would have been unsettled and unhappy in their new home as a result.

‘You are a lady, chuck,’ Stuart said now, throwing open the kitchen door and smiling across at his wife, standing by the table enveloped in a huge white apron, whilst the steam made her hair curl in tiny tendrils around her face and turned her cheeks scarlet. ‘Here she is, Nell darling, as safe as houses and as pretty as a picture.’

Lilac walked into the room and kissed Nellie’s hot cheek, then turned back to Stuart, her blue eyes dancing with innocent flirtatiousness.

‘Oh Stuart, I wish I were a lady, for if I were I’d do all sorts of exciting things, but there’s no gainsaying that I’m just me.’ She turned to her sister. ‘Nellie, love, I’m sorry I worried you, but it wasn’t my fault I was late, honest to God.’

‘It never is, honest to God,’ Nellie said drily, ladling the steaming pudding onto three plates. ‘Tell us what happened; is Mrs Matteson all right?’

‘Fine, now. Better for that wretch of a cook leaving without warning just at dinner time,’ Lilac said. ‘That was why I was late, I had to get some decent food and Mrs O’Malley, the awful cook, had left us with a bare pantry, so it took a while. Shall I put the spuds round whilst you do the greens, Nell?’

‘You sit yourself down and be a guest for once,’ Stuart ordered her. ‘She hasn’t told you how she got here, Nell. What a girl she is!’

‘I came by cab,’ Lilac said proudly, when Nellie looked an enquiry across the table. ‘I was so desperate to reach your steak pudding, our Nell, that I didn’t grudge the money one bit. And it were a good drive, too. I enjoyed it, though right at the start I thought I’d caught me skirt in the door of the taxi, which could easily have spoiled it.’

‘There you are; eat up,’ Nellie ordered, pulling her own chair up to the table and picking up her knife and fork. ‘What made you think you’d caught your skirt in the door, chuck?’

‘I can’t remember . . . yes I can, it was a little girl, a real street arab, standing by the kerb screeching something at me and waving. And then when the cab started to move she ran behind for a few steps, so I thought she must have wanted to warn me I’d trapped my skirt. Only I hadn’t.’

‘I see,’ Nellie said placidly. Stuart, eating, grinned to himself. He did love feminine logic, and anyway he was feeling supremely happy. The two women he loved best in the world – he was very fond of Lilac even when she was acting like any other pretty, empty-headed youngster – were sitting at his table, his wife was expecting a baby, and they were about to move south to a well-paid job. Furthermore, he had always wanted to work in London because the city fascinated him.

But thinking about the baby made him think about something else, something he would rather have forgotten. When he had asked Nellie to marry him she had told him that long ago, when she had been little more than a child herself, she had borne an illegitimate son to another man. He had been shattered, astonished, hurt. Nellie had always seemed perfect to him, a delicately beautiful, sensitive girl whose main aim in life had been to guard the child Lilac against all ills and to strain every nerve to bring back health and happiness to the wounded soldiers in her charge – for Nellie had been nursing when they had first met as adults. He had been so sure of her innocence, too, and for a couple of days he had kept away from her, feeling betrayed and cheated.

But it had not lasted: Stuart was too fairminded not to see the double-standards he was applying to Nellie’s unwelcome and unexpected revelation. He had had a good few experiences himself, and he had not got the excuse of youth and innocence, either. A pretty Parisienne, a warmhearted brunette from Bootle, a blonde and bubbly girl-reporter covering the same story as he in France, had all shared his bed at one time or another and he had instigated the relationship in each instance. Yet even knowing that he had no right to expect Nellie to be different, he still felt, irrationally, that he had been cheated. If only she had talked more about the affair, explained . . .

Apologised, you mean, Stuart said crossly to himself. After what that girl suffered during the war, surely you aren’t still of the opinion that women are in some way different to men? That your little flings are to be tolerated with a smile whilst her one fall from grace must be frowned upon as a deeply immoral act? You know Nellie, you know she’s a sweet, giving person. She must have thought she was in love with the chap . . . she never said what happened about the baby . . . Oh but it’s different, I can’t bear it, she’s mine, all mine, I’ve got her present and her future in my loving hands and the truth is I want her past, too!

‘Stu? What a grim expression!’ Lilac smiled at him, breaking into his train of thought, bringing him abruptly back to the present, to the cosy kitchen, the untouched food on his plate. ‘If you don’t want your dinner, I know someone who does!’

‘Don’t say you’re still hungry, our Lilac!’ Nellie exclaimed. ‘Better start your meal, Stu love, or the poor, hungry orphan will be whipping it off your plate and on to her own!’

‘I am, I am,’ Stuart said, hastily beginning to eat. ‘Nellie, you’re the queen of cooks,’ he added through a full mouth. ‘This is prime! I can’t blame the kid for wanting seconds.’

‘There’s a bit more pudding left, and some veggies, if you’d like them, Lilac,’ Nellie said. ‘Pass your plate, queen.’

Lilac laughed but shook her head.

‘Couldn’t, I’m stuffed fuller’n a Christmas turkey,’ she declared. ‘And did someone say it was lemon chiffon for afters?’

‘Someone did. And now since Stu’s come out of his brown study and started to eat I’ll fetch it through. It’s on the marble slab in the pantry, keeping cool.’

Nellie got up to fetch the dessert whilst Lilac cleared the table and Stuart, conscience-stricken, ate as fast as he could. He was just thankful that no one had offered him a penny for his thoughts though, because a guilty blush might have led Nellie to make a pretty shrewd guess as to why his face had seemed grim.

‘All done, love?’ Nellie said as he pushed back his plate. ‘Lemon chiffon? Or would you rather have cheese and biscuits?’

She always asked, almost always provided a dessert, though she knew Stuart invariably chose cheese. His wishes, he knew, came first with her, she studied to please him in everything, never really considered herself at all. So why could not he, in his turn, be more generous over the only action of hers which he could not entirely understand and condone? This evening, to make up for his unkind thoughts, Stuart eyed the lemon chiffon appreciatively and said he would try some, thank you, dear.

‘You can have cheese afterwards,’ Nellie said, twinkling at him. ‘A chiffon is ever so light.’

I wonder if he was dark or fair, her first fellow, Stuart’s mind wondered perversely as he began to eat the delicious, lemony dessert. Or he might have been grey haired, or a red-head . . . he could even have been bald, with a great white beard!

‘Go on, Nell, you’re eating for two, remember,’ Lilac remarked. ‘Take the last bit of chiffon, it’ll make young Gallagher grow up big and strong!’

Stuart finished off his dessert and reached for the cheese. What on earth was the matter with him tonight? What did it matter if her lover – even thinking the word was like a knife twisting in his guts – was dark or fair, grey or bald? He was past, perhaps dead, certainly out of both sight and mind. Or out of Nellie’s mind, anyway. So why should the bloke, whoever he was, persist in entering Stuart’s thoughts on the least possible excuse, to plague and irritate?

‘Biscuits, love?’

Nellie held out the small, round tin. Stuart selected two, cut himself a wedge of his favourite cheese and watched the two girls as they bustled round clearing the table, for they were later than usual and Lilac would have to be walked to the tram stop soon or she would miss the last one.

As he ate, it occurred to him that there might be a rather nasty secondary reason for his sudden preoccupation with Nellie’s past. The obvious reason was her pregnancy, because every time he looked at her he could not help remembering that this was not the first time her stomach had slowly swelled and ripened with a child. He thought guiltily that the secondary reason might easily be that with Nellie’s pregnancy pulling her out of shape and making her tired and pale, he was noticing Lilac’s ripe young beauty more than ever before – and perhaps as a result was very conscious of the fact that Lilac still had an almost childish affection for him, which took the form, often, of friendly flirtatiousness.

If it wasn’t for Nellie . . . he found himself thinking, and was appalled at his own shallowness. He loved his wife deeply, devotedly, and he loved Lilac as one loves one’s wife’s pretty little sister. He harboured no carnal desire for the younger girl either, despite her lovely looks; he was simply intrigued by the sneaking suspicion that, should he make advances, Lilac would fall into his hands like a ripe plum.

‘Finished, dearest? Then pass your plate and go and read the paper whilst Li and I wash up and have a good gossip.’

Nellie gave him her sweetest smile and Stuart, muttering that he really ought to help, left the room, clutching the evening paper and feeling a complete cad.

Well, he had looked himself squarely in the face and he didn’t much like what he had seen. A man who could not bring himself to forgive his wife for a long-dead, girlhood love-affair, yet admitted to a prurient interest in her pretty younger sister. What sort of a fellow was he, for goodness sake? He sat down in the basket chair by the window and opened the paper. He would never think about Nellie’s past again, what did it matter, it was over, finished! Though one day, when they were both much older and wiser, he might just ask her . . .

Nellie set down her teacup and eased her aching back, then stood up. Stuart must be roused from his newspaper so that he and she might walk Lilac to the tram, and Lilac must be brought indoors and put into her coat, because at present she was gossiping over the back wall to Ena Evans, next door.

Nellie sighed and began to walk slowly across the kitchen. Having a baby was a tiring business, her legs hurt, her back ached and now even her mind was uncomfortable, because she knew her dear Stuart as well as she knew herself, and she had known as soon as she saw the expression on his face at supper-time, that he was thinking about Davy again.

Not that he knew about Davy, he just knew he wasn’t her first lover, that this baby would be her second child. He had sworn it didn’t matter, wouldn’t affect their love, and it hadn’t, not at first. Not until she told him she was expecting his child and she saw how his first joy had been tempered by the thought,
she’s done it all before
.

It was a pity, really, that they had both agreed never to mention the matter again, because some things, Nellie believed, needed discussion before complete understanding could result. She had never told Stuart that Davy was married, and happily at that, to a girl called Bethan from the little village of Moelfre in Anglesey. Never told him that Bethan’s eldest child, Richart, was the baby to whom she, Nellie, had given birth on that chilly March day in 1915. Not that anyone had known she was the child’s mother. Bethan, believing Davy dead, had longed for a child and Nellie had known she could not give Richart a tenth of what would be his as Bethan’s boy. So they had padded Bethan with cushions, and covered Nellie with voluminous aprons and a cloak, and Richart had stayed in Moelfre where he was totally accepted as Bethan’s son. Even Davy, who had been posted as missing but who had in fact been picked up by a passing ship and was in rude health, thought the boy was his and Bethan’s. Conceived on his last leave, born in his absence . . . Davy was sure that Richart was the best thing that had ever happened to him.

So though Nellie could have told Stuart that her child’s father was a married man and to the best of her knowledge alive and kicking, she could never tell him who that father was nor that the child was living with his father and that father’s legal wife on the Isle of Anglesey. It was not her secret to tell and she and Bethan had vowed silence. To break that vow would have been unforgivable.

So perhaps not mentioning it ever again was the best idea, after all. If only Stuart could have put it right out of his mind, pretended it had never happened. Nellie did just that, most of the time. There was no point in dwelling on it; what can’t be cured must be endured, her Aunt Ada used to say. Well, it was true and she was doing her very best to endure, but when she saw Stuart looking at her as though she was somehow evil . . . well, it was hard.