The Liverpool Trilogy (123 page)

Maureen closed her mouth with an audible snap. ‘And what will you ask for, Mam?’

‘For my family to be safe.’

Tom sighed and turned away, and the women followed him into the living room. In the age-old stance of a man lecturing his family, he stood with his back to the fire, feet planted apart, one hand
pushing hair from his face. ‘You could cause deaths,’ he said softly.

‘I know that.’ Paddy paused for several seconds. ‘One night last summer, you were forced to protect your family. You became ill, then came to terms with what had happened.
Whichever group is after Finbar and Michael, we know it’s not the Krays.’

‘So?’ Maureen sat and folded her arms as if protecting herself from what she was hearing.

‘If their mother asks them, they will deal with it. I shall also suggest that my grandsons be chased away if they ever return to London.’ Paddy closed her eyes. London, like the
moon, was there. It lingered beyond the bounds of imagination, was not as visible as the world’s silver companion which came and went on a monthly basis. London was on the Pathé News
at the cinema. Nelson balanced on a tall column in some square or other – Trafalgar? There was Hyde Park where daft folk stood on orange boxes and ranted on about politics, religion and what
have you, while the queen lived in an un-pretty palace big enough for forty-five married couples with kids, plus guests and lodgers.

The strangest thing about this Bootle family was that Tom knew where to stop with Paddy, whereas her daughter just barged on and on until the tears came. ‘You are not going to London on
your own, Mam.’

Paddy shrugged. ‘I am. I’m going on my own, by myself, with nobody. And I won’t even tell you when. No way am I arriving with what they call an enterage.’

‘Entourage,’ Tom offered, wishing immediately that he could bite back the word. The expression on his mother-in-law’s face was sculpted to kill. But he wasn’t going to
apologize. ‘I’ll just fetch our Seamus,’ he said rather lamely.

‘No, you won’t,’ snapped the angry Irishwoman. ‘He’s stopping with me and his granddad while you have a honeymoon.’ She nodded. ‘Yes, he hears
everything. We all know there’s no privacy in these tin boxes. No matter what, there’s always some clever so-and-so can see you, hear you or smell you.’ She turned to her
daughter. ‘Have some time off work and calm yourself down. Honeymoon?’ She tutted. ‘It’ll be more like the Battle of the Bulge.’

When Paddy had left, Tom studied his wife. No way was he going to take her to Waterloo tonight. To say she was in a bad mood would have been similar to stating that the sun was slightly warm.
‘There’s steam coming out of your nose,’ he said.

‘There’ll be blood pouring out of yours in a minute if you don’t bugger off. Go and see your friend. I’ll have a bath and listen to the wireless.’ She flounced out
of the living room.

Tom sat for a while, scarcely realizing that he was engaged in a countdown. Then it happened. He strode down the hall and into the bathroom. Maureen cried like a child, wholeheartedly and with
great enthusiasm for the job. Even when her face was screwed up like a sheet of paper in a bin, she remained beautiful. The presence of children and in-laws often stopped the cure, but the couple
were alone this time. Roy would be expecting him, but Maureen was, as ever, top of Tom’s list of priorities.

He marched away to bolt the outer doors, then lifted his soggy spouse, carried her to the living room and medicated her. She lay in his arms afterwards. ‘You’re all wet,
Tom.’

‘I know. So are you.’

She kissed him. ‘Why does that always work?’

Tom shrugged. ‘Releases tension. I suppose we’re lucky. Some women can’t abide it. You’ve always been an easy little tart.’

‘I’ll bite your ears, Thomas Walsh.’

‘Really? Then we’ll be forced to deal once again with matters arising therefrom—’

‘Braggart.’

‘Matters arising,’ he repeated, ‘and I have to go to Roy’s house. You coming?’

‘No. I’ll go to bed and wait for you.’

‘Oh?’

‘Matters arising.’

He watched as his wife walked away. There were little white indentations on her belly where unborn children had stretched her out of shape, and the flesh on her thighs was no longer firm, but
she was gorgeous. Her beauty lay in the fact that she didn’t make herself precious, didn’t concentrate on faults resulting from the natural process of ageing. ‘A whole week of you
all to myself,’ he told her.

Maureen stood in the doorway. ‘Depends,’ she replied.

‘On what?’

She shrugged. ‘New milkman. Haven’t tried him out yet. Oh, and you have to stop Mam going to London. She’s not ready for London.’

Tom laughed. ‘I wonder if London’s ready for her?’

‘Oh, I’m going to warm my bath up and start again. Tell Roy hello from me, but I’m out of order due to matters what arose. And on your way back, you can fetch me cod, chips and
peas.’

Tom sighed. He would sleep with the smell of malt vinegar, would wake to the same aroma mingling delicately with the odour of cooled fat. There would be newsprint on sheets, escaped chips in the
bed, bits of batter adhering lovingly to parts of his person. But it didn’t matter, because she was his girl.

As he drove towards Waterloo, he thought about Roy. Roy loved a woman across the road. He busied himself with work and his allotment, enjoyed decorating and improving the house, yet every waking
moment he thought of this Rosh woman, the widow of his best friend. He spoke of her with reverence, and repeatedly expressed the opinion that she would never look at him because he was substandard
in the walking department.

‘What’s a bloody game leg at the end of the day?’ Tom asked the windscreen. ‘He’s good-looking, has a smart job, grows his own veg and flowers – what the
bloody hell does she want? Gregory flaming Peck?’

He parked the car. Roy was waiting for him at the gate. A neat, proud little garden showed off its residents, early cheerfulness and the gladiatorial threats of daffodils preparing to show their
colours. ‘Hello, there,’ said Tom.

‘I’d given you up.’

Tom shrugged. ‘Listen, with my family, you never know whether you’re fish, fowl or faggots from the cheap end of the market. We had a situation.’

‘Oh. Everything all right now?’

Tom cleared his head of Maureen, the sight of her, the sound of sobs slowing with every move he made. ‘It was our youngest threatening to leave home for a while. I had to stay and calm my
wife down – she gets upset. Maureen sends her apologies, by the way. She says she’ll meet you when she’s in a better frame of mind and not in the bath.’

Roy laughed. ‘Unusual things, women. I’ve sometimes wondered whether we’re the same species as them. We’ve one at the bottom of Lawton Road who collects operations.
I’m not joking. She looks in medical books, finds an illness she fancies and works on it. Come in.’

Tom hung up his coat in the small hallway. ‘You’ve done a good job in here, Roy. Glad you kept the original mouldings and so forth. So. What’s the operation woman working on
now?’

‘As far as I know, it’s ingrowing toenails. She’s wearing her sister’s shoes – too small for her – and binding her feet at night. If she gets this operation,
it’ll be number twenty, then she’s retiring. The thing is, the hospitals are cottoning on at last. She’s had her appendix out twice.’

Tom blinked.

‘I know, I know,’ Roy sighed. ‘But she came over all acute one day, and off she went in a bell-clanger. Turned out to be wind. They rooted round in her belly for a few minutes,
but all they found was methane. She stunk out the theatre and three corridors. There was talk of issuing gas masks, and the water board dug up the drains . . .’

Tom held up a hand. ‘Enough. I come from a mad Irish family, so I get plenty of this at home.’

Roy, acting in the mode of estate agent, led his ‘client’ through the house. In spite of his difficult leg, he had turned the place into a miniature palace. ‘I hadn’t the
heart when he was alive.’ There was no need to nominate the ‘he’, since Tom already knew about Roy’s worthless, cruel father. ‘But once he’d gone, I noticed what
a pretty little house I had. Dirty, untidy, but attractive, it begged to be restored.’

‘For her?’

Roy shook his head. ‘For me. Though I suppose showing her what I can do did no harm. No, she’ll never live here. If – and that’s a big word – anything came of our
so-called relationship, we’d sell both houses and get a bigger one. She has three children, two cats and a mother.’

Tom tutted. ‘I have a mother-in-law. She’s a great woman, but she could talk the legs off a grand piano. Good-hearted, she is, only she’s always right. When she’s totally
wrong, she’s righter than ever. Now. What’s that lovely smell coming from your kitchen? I could eat a bald man on a butty, I’m telling you.’

They dined on a fruity curry served with coconut, sliced banana and home-made pickle. ‘By, that was good,’ Tom declared when he’d finished off everything apart from the pattern
on the plate. ‘A lot nicer than a bald man on a sarnie. The last time I had one of them, he was all gristle.’

They ate very English apple tart and drank coffee in the front living room. Tom noticed that Roy placed himself in a chair angled to get the best view of the house opposite. ‘Is she
in?’ Tom asked.

Roy shook his head. ‘Isle of Man while the schools are on Easter break. She’ll— I mean they’ll be back in a couple of days.’

Tom took a sip of coffee. ‘You’re in pain, aren’t you? Like I was when you found me down at the Pier Head. Come on, lad, you can’t go breaking your heart over the
impossible. She’ll either come round, or she won’t. Do you want to be sitting here when you’re eighty wondering if she’ll have you? Wouldn’t you be better off looking
for a life elsewhere? Selling up and moving on?’

‘I can’t. In case she needs me. I help with the kids sometimes, and I do stuff round the house for her.’

‘You sound like a servant.’

Roy shrugged. ‘I’d rather serve her than be master of anybody else. Over twenty years, I’ve felt like this. When she chose Phil, I grinned and bore it, but he’s dead now,
and . . . and . . . well—’

‘You’d like to take his place.’

‘Not really. Nobody could ever take his place. I just want her. Mad, isn’t it?’

Tom was no longer sure. The idea of life without his Maureen was horrible, but he’d been with her for a long time . . . Yes, he’d been lucky. He took a photograph from his wallet and
handed it to his companion. ‘There’s my trouble and strife,’ he said. ‘And I wouldn’t part with her for all the riches in the world. Roy? Roy?’

‘I’ll . . . er . . . just a minute.’

Roy staggered to the bureau, opened a drawer and pulled out a photograph. ‘Here. Have a look at that.’

Tom looked. ‘But it’s—’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Roy, they could be twins, except mine’s a good few years older than yours.’

‘Yes.’

Each man stared at a picture of the other’s beloved.

‘We all have a double, or so they say,’ Tom said.

Roy cleared his throat. ‘And they’re not exactly the same. The mouths and eyes are slightly different, but look at the hairlines, the cheekbones.’

‘I know. It’s uncanny. We could swap photos, and we’d hardly know the difference except for the clothes and the backgrounds. You’ve good taste, Roy.’

There seemed to be little left to say. Both men sat and stared at the walls for a few minutes, each aware of the other’s inexplicable discomfort. Tom picked up the photograph of Maureen.
‘She wants fish and chips,’ he said quietly. ‘If I go now, I’ll avoid the rush after the pubs close.’

On his way back to Bootle, he found himself strangely close to tears. Tonight, he had eaten in the house of a grand chap who loved the spitting image of Maureen. As he waited for fish, chips and
peas, Tom counted his blessings once again. ‘Plenty of vinegar, please. My wife loves her vinegar.’
And I love my wife
, his inner voice said.
Between us, me and Maureen will
get Roy and Rosh together.

He drove the rest of the way to Stanley Square. Maureen and Rosh had to meet.

Well, I’m really done for now. Old Mr Bailey’s gone, and his wife wants the shop shutting for a while as a mark of respect? Respect? He loved his tobaccos and
his customers, liked chatting to other pipe-smokers about all the different flavours. Respect should mean keeping the place running, but no. She’s a woman. Women are daft.

The house on Menlove Avenue was a huge part of Tess’s dream come true. It was pretty, solid, cosy, and it was hers. Housewifery was her main skill and chief employment,
but she was spreading her wings, working, making a difference.

Another possession about which she rejoiced was her driving licence, that cute little red book with her name and address printed inside. It didn’t record the fact that she had passed first
time with scarcely any effort on her part, but that didn’t really matter. Well aware of what she’d achieved, she made sure that most people within her sphere were aware of that
particular truth. Tess knew of women who had failed five, six or seven times, so she held her head high every time she opened the door of her Morris. The van was not a thing of beauty, but she was
in control of it, and that was what counted. Tess now considered herself to be a woman of substance, and that attitude was demonstrated in her demeanour. It was very much a case of
Look out
world, here I come.

She had two jobs, neither of them connected to the Smithdown Road launderette. The tenant in the flat above took care of the business, and she seemed a decent body, grateful for cheap
accommodation and a wage. So Tess was free at last and could make her money as she wished. Containment on Smithdown Road had never suited her, and she felt as if she had been released from prison
after a long sentence. They were a proper family in a proper house, and Tess had finally reached her main goal.

On Saturday mornings, Tess wove her way round Liverpool, stopping at various small agencies, usually newspaper shops, to pick up football pools coupons and cash, all of which had to be delivered
to Littlewoods long before matches kicked off. There was paperwork involved, and Mark rode shotgun, as he put it, so that he could add up and fill in forms while she drove. Tess was beginning to be
impressed by her daughter’s boyfriend. He wore leathers, had a loud, huge motorbike and a decent shirt-and-tie job during the week. He also hung in patiently while Anne-Marie flaunted herself
in front of the Quarry Men, seemed not to mind while the wayward child chased after the Lennon boy, Paul McCartney and anyone else with a guitar or a drumstick.